Major Cyber Attacks in Review: January 2025

In January 2025 a series of high-impact cyber incidents affected healthcare, education, telecoms, AI platforms, hospitality, and cryptocurrency: major data breaches (PowerSchool ~62M students, CHC >1M patients, Otelier, Wolf Haldenstein, alleged TalkTalk/Ascendon), a ransomware disruption at New York Blood Center Enterprises, a $69M theft from Phemex, DeepSeek exposed databases and malicious PyPI packages, and a record 5.6 Tbps Mirai-variant DDoS — attackers leveraged stolen credentials, malware, cloud misconfigurations, and infostealer packages, causing large-scale data exposure and operational disruption.