cyberattack

noun

cy·​ber·​at·​tack ˈsī-bər-ə-ˌtak 

plural cyberattacks

: an attempt to gain illegal access to a computer or computer system for the purpose of causing damage or harm

An undermine-first strategy allows the United States government to intrude into adversaries' systems, exploiting this covert access to gather intelligence and occasionally to deliver a destructive cyberattack.

—Joshua A. Kroll

If your data is valuable enough, there is almost nothing you can do to provide total security against an expert adversary. Simply put, the attacker may be smarter than anyone you have defending the network. Cyberattacks are not only impossible to block, they're often difficult to detect; you may not even know you're under attack in the first place.

—Robert W. Lucky

cyberattacker

ˈsī-bər-ə-ˌta-kər 

noun

plural cyberattackers

Cyberattackers constantly evolve their skills and will always find new ways to attack—it's not a question of "if," but of "when."

—Eileen Dignen

Examples of cyberattack in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

While the financial sector has certainly seen its share of systemic shocks, the cyberattack on Change Healthcare in February 2024 and the recent CrowdStrike IT outage highlighted how systemic risk not only exists in healthcare but can have equal, if not far more severe, consequences. —Ed Gaudet, Forbes, 25 Oct. 2024

Nadella had requested that the cash portion of his compensation be lowered to reflect security issues after a series of cyberattacks prompted criticism from the U.S. government. —Michele Luhn, CNBC, 25 Oct. 2024

As conflicts boil over in the Middle East and Ukraine, there has been a jump in cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, said Courtney Adante, president of security risk advisory at Teneo. —Michael Loria, USA TODAY, 25 Oct. 2024

Microsoft was the target of a series of major cyberattack campaigns in 2023 and early 2024. —Rocio Fabbro, Quartz, 25 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1996, in the meaning defined above