Cyberattack Case Study

In this assignment you’ll write a short analysis of a significant cyberattack that:
• Occurred in the last 5 years
• Impacted more than one million accounts or had significant national or financial impact
• Exposed personally identifiable information (PII) or caused significant military,
infrastructure, political, or financial consequences/impact
1.1 Important report criteria
Make sure your paper addresses the following items about the cyberattack that you’ve selected.
• The history of its development
– Is this attack the first from the attack’s creator?
– Were previous attacks successful?
– Was the attack sponsored by government entity, or a suspected governement entity?
• The purpose of the attack
• Its intended usage domain, and the general characteristics of the attack’s penetration
strategy
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• One distinctive feature or trait that set it apart from other attacks, either historically or
technologically
• Whether it or any of its descendants remain in use, and why do those descendants still
exist
1.1.1 Document requirements
Make sure the report is formatted as follows:
• 12 point font
• 1 inch margins
• Line spacing set to 1.5
• minimum 2 pages of text
– More pages are allowed to provide for images
– There is still the two pages of text minimum
You need two references, one of which may be an online reference to the cyberattack and the
other of which should be a manual, textbook, or contemporary article describing it.
This is not a formal research paper but you must cite any source you use using citation
builders like http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/index.php and https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/
citationbuilder/, and you must write all material in your own terms, not merely copy and paste.
1.1.2 Suggested Outline
Please make sure that your paper addresses all the items in the Report Criteria. It will belp you
to organize your paper based on the outline suggested below.
1. Introduction
2. History of development
• Was the sponsor or creator a government agency or affiliate?
• What was the motivation? (Money, strategic, infrastructure, etc.) Be specific.
3. History of attack with discussion of the attack’s impact on the chosen target(s)
4. General characteristics
5. Usage domain(s) – or target group(s)
6. Active descendants
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7. What actions were taken to prevent similar attacks
8. What punitive actions were executed against the attacker(s)