This Halloween, the scariest stories aren’t of haunted houses or things that go bump in the night—they come from the dark corners of cyberspace. The year 2024 has been riddled with cyberattacks that hit governments, businesses, and millions of unsuspecting individuals. These real-life digital horrors will send chills down your spine as we revisit the most terrifying breaches and hacks of the year.

1. The Phantom Breach – Indonesia Data Breach

The series of breaches revealed a lack of data backup protocols, embarrassing the Indonesian government and putting its cybersecurity practices under scrutiny. This wasn’t Indonesia’s first brush with cyberattacks—previous years had seen similar horrors, such as the theft of 1.5 terabytes of sensitive data from Bank Syariah Indonesia in 2023. The government’s repeated failures to protect its citizens’ information is a ghost that may continue to haunt it for years to come.

2. The Eternal Haunting – Ticketmaster Breach

The online ticketing giant Ticketmaster became the next victim of a cyberattack in May 2024. Hackers infiltrated their system, exposing over 560 million customer records. This treasure trove of stolen data included order histories, payment information, and personal details such as names, addresses, and email addresses. The compromised information was soon being sold on hacker forums, putting millions of customers at risk of fraud.

While the company scrambled to send warnings to affected users, urging them to monitor their accounts, the damage was already done. Ticketmaster’s woes are far from over, as the company is already entangled in a federal antitrust lawsuit. For the victims, the thought of having their personal information sold in the dark corners of the web remains an eternal haunting.

3. The Silent Intruder – Dell Data Breach

May 2024 also saw tech giant Dell fall victim to a sophisticated cyberattack. A threat actor named Menelik managed to infiltrate Dell’s system by creating fake partner accounts in their company portal. For nearly three weeks, Menelik’s brute-force attacks went unnoticed, allowing him to extract sensitive data from 49 million customer accounts.

In an ironic twist, the hacker sent multiple emails to Dell, alerting them to the vulnerability he exploited. While Dell acknowledged that no financial information had been breached, sensitive data such as customer addresses, orders, and account information had been exposed. By the time Dell reacted, the stolen data had already been listed for sale online. For Dell, the silent intruder had left behind a wake of disruption, as millions of customers now faced the risk of identity theft.

4. The Glitched Feast – Jollibee Data Breach

In 2024, Jollibee Foods Corp, one of Asia’s largest food retailers, faced a major data breach, exposing the personal information of over 11 million customers. Renowned threat actor Sp1d3r listed the stolen database on a dark web forum, putting sensitive data such as birth dates, senior citizen IDs, postal addresses, and even credit card numbers at risk. While Jollibee’s e-commerce platforms remained operational and unaffected by ransomware, the breach raised concerns about the security of their data systems.

The company swiftly launched an investigation and notified the National Privacy Commission (NPC), requesting additional time to assess the damage. This isn’t the first time Jollibee has faced such a challenge—an earlier breach in 2018 also put customer data at risk.