Cybersecurity News Round-Up 2024: 10 Biggest Stories That Dominated the Year

TechRepublic looks back at the biggest cybersecurity stories of 2024, from record data breaches to rising ransomware threats and CISO burnout.

This year has not been quiet for the cybersecurity field. We have seen record-breaking data breaches, huge ransomware payouts, and illuminating studies about the impact of the increasingly complex and ever-evolving threat landscape.

As we approach the new year, TechRepublic revisits the biggest cybersecurity stories of 2024.

1.  Midnight Blizzard’s attack on Microsoft

In January, Microsoft disclosed that it had been a victim of a nation-state-backed attack beginning in November 2023. The Russian threat actor group Midnight Blizzard accessed some Microsoft corporate emails and documents through compromised email accounts. Later, Microsoft revealed they had also accessed some source code repositories and internal systems.

Midnight Blizzard gained access through a successful password spray attack on a legacy test tenant account without multi-factor authorisation. Password spraying is a brute force ...