5 of the Scariest IT News Stories of 2024… Spooky!

Every October, tiny ghouls, ghosts, and goblins emerge from the dark to haunt homes and demand candy after dark. But these fictitious frights aren’t nearly as horrific as the scariest stories in the real world that have come to light in 2024… and there have been many.

From dreaded blue screens of death wreaking havoc on global infrastructure to massive data breaches to state-sponsored spies defrauding huge companies, there has been a lot to scream about in the world of IT security. Behold some of the scariest stories from the world of information technology in 2025, featuring quotes from the Spiceworks Community and spooky stats that might keep you awake at night.

#1: FBI Reports Losses Exceeding $12.5B Due to Cybercrime in a Single Year

In an April 4, 2024 press releaseOpens a new window , the Federal Bureau of Investigations Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that they received “880,418 complaints with potential losses exceeding $12.5 billion” from members of the American public. These figures represent a 22% increase in losses compared to the previous year, with the most commonly reported crime being phishing. These stats were just one scary piece of the agency’s annual Internet Crime Report.

#2: North Korean Hackers Defraud Corporations of an Estimated $300M per Year

Could your coworker Bob actually be a spy working for a foreign government? While unlikely, we recently reported that more than 300 companies had been infiltrated by North Korean hackers pretending to be US nationals (with the help of a tangled web of shady characters) to secure remote jobs. This large-scale con was convincing enough for many state-sponsored hackers to gain employees of their target companies, collecting salaries as they often installed malware or exfiltrated sensitive data.

#3: Estimated 170M People Impacted by Hack on Data Broker Hack

National Public Data, a data brokerage company that performs background checks on individuals, was the victim of a massive hack affecting 170M people and involving 2.9 billion records, including many social security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers. According to the US House Committee on Oversight and AccountabilityOpens a new window , “the stolen data was put up for sale on the dark web … for $3.5 million, possibly as early as April of this year. National Public Data has acknowledged the data breaches likely happened earlier this year but appears to have failed to inform victims about them in a timely manner.”

#4: Data on 590M Ticketmaster Users Leaked, Made Available on the Dark Web

We recently reported a hacking group known as ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for breaching Ticketmaster, which commands 80% of the US ticketing market (e.g., for attending a music concert or festival), which executed a massive data breach containing 1.3 terabytes of data. The hackers then placed the data—containing names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and credit card details of the victims—for sale for half a million dollars on a Dark Web site known as BreachForums.

#5: Massive Worldwide Outages Caused by Security Firm Crowdstrike’s Update

Last but not least, we have the curious case of the Crowdstrike outage, which brought many companies to their knees. However, the massive outage resulting in blue screens of death on Windows machines was not caused by hackers but by an unfortunate incident in security software updates pushed to millions of machines gone wrong. The outages caused significant damage to many businesses: Delta Airlines claimed it canceled more than 6,000 flights due to the mishap. Some estimates even placed financial losses among Fortune 500 companies topping $5.4 billion.

But it wasn’t just the big guys who were affected. Some of the scariest stories come from individual personal experience. IT professionals in the Spiceworks Community also reported major outages in their organizations, resulting in lots overtime to get everyone back up and running.