A Brief History of Cybercrime

A chronological timeline and high-level analysis of cybercrime from the 1960s to the early 2020s that catalogs major events — early viruses and worms, high-profile breaches (e.g., Sony, Target, Capital One, SolarWinds), prolific malware and ransomware families (e.g., Stuxnet, Zeus, CryptoLocker, WannaCry, NotPetya, LockBit), nation-state and APT activity (e.g., Operation Aurora), and recent trends such as ransomware-as-a-service, credential stuffing, Log4j exploitation, and the evolving criminal ecosystem.