💻 Cybersecurity & Hacks Trivia Questions & Answers
Famous breaches, viruses and the world of hacking and defence. Below are 30 free cybersecurity & hacks trivia questions with answers — part of Tech trivia on BUZZ. Want a real challenge that adapts to what you know? Play the Tech quiz — no signup needed to start.
30 Cybersecurity & Hacks trivia questions
Q1. Which love-note-themed worm swept from the Philippines in May 2000, infecting 10 million PCs?
Answer: ILOVEYOU
💡 Its creator, Onel de Guzman, avoided prosecution because the Philippines had no cybercrime laws at the time.
Q2. A May 2021 ransomware attack on which US company sparked East Coast gasoline panic-buying?
Answer: Colonial Pipeline
💡 The DarkSide hacking group behind the attack was paid roughly $4.4 million in bitcoin, part of which the FBI later clawed back.
Q3. Unleashed in May 2017, which ransomware crippled parts of the UK's NHS using a leaked NSA exploit?
Answer: WannaCry
💡 Microsoft had already released a patch for the underlying flaw about two months before WannaCry struck computers worldwide.
Q4. Disclosed in 2016 but dating to 2013, which company's breach affected all 3 billion user accounts?
Answer: Yahoo
💡 The breach disclosures led Verizon to knock $350 million off the price it paid to acquire the company in 2017.
Q5. Which credit-reporting giant exposed 147 million Social Security numbers after a missed 2017 patch?
Answer: Equifax
💡 Equifax waited about six weeks after discovering the intrusion before notifying the public in September 2017.
Q6. In November 2014, hackers called Guardians of Peace breached which studio over a Kim Jong-un film?
Answer: Sony Pictures
💡 The attackers also deployed a data-wiping tool related to the Shamoon malware, destroying computers rather than just leaking files.
Q7. Spread via hijacked Ukrainian tax software, which malware crippled shipper Maersk in June 2017?
Answer: NotPetya
💡 Despite looking like ransomware, NotPetya's real goal was destruction — it had no way to actually unlock the files it scrambled.
Q8. Revealed in December 2020, whose hacked Orion software let spies inside US government networks?
Answer: SolarWinds
💡 Investigators found the SolarWinds hackers had lurked inside victim networks for more than a year before FireEye's own breach exposed them.
Q9. Which company's 2010 breach, code-named Operation Aurora, led it to exit censored search in China?
Answer: Google
💡 Investigators traced the campaign's entry point to a previously unknown flaw in Internet Explorer, exploited the moment a victim opened a booby-trapped page.
Q10. Discovered in 2010, which computer worm sabotaged uranium centrifuges at Iran's Natanz facility?
Answer: Stuxnet
💡 Investigators believe it crossed the facility's air gap via an infected USB drive carried in by an unwitting contractor.
Q11. In December 2013, hackers stole 40 million card numbers from which retailer via an HVAC login?
Answer: Target
💡 Target ultimately paid $18.5 million to settle claims across 47 states, the largest multistate data-breach settlement at the time.
Q12. In October 2016, which botnet of hijacked cameras and routers knocked Twitter and Netflix offline?
Answer: Mirai
💡 Dyn restored service within about two hours, but more than 14,000 websites still dropped it as their DNS provider afterward.
Q13. Founded by accident in 1993 as a farewell party, which convention is Vegas's hacker summer camp?
Answer: DEF CON
💡 The first one in 1993 drew only about 100 attendees before growing into one of the world's largest hacker gatherings.
Q14. Appearing in September 2013, which ransomware encrypted files and demanded Bitcoin for the key?
Answer: CryptoLocker
💡 Within just over two months, its operators are estimated to have extorted roughly $27 million in Bitcoin and cash vouchers.
Q15. In July 2001, which worm defaced infected Microsoft servers with the message 'Hacked By Chinese!'?
Answer: Code Red
💡 At its peak on July 19, 2001, it had infected roughly 359,000 servers in a single day.
Q16. Which 2014 OpenSSL bug became the first vulnerability marketed with its own logo and website?
Answer: Heartbleed
💡 The bleeding-heart logo came from a designer at Finnish security firm Codenomicon, which also coined the bug's catchy name.
Q17. In 2005, which record label got caught secretly installing rootkit software via its own music CDs?
Answer: Sony BMG
💡 Sony BMG's rootkit was only exposed after a security researcher's own rootkit-detection tool stumbled on it hiding on his PC.
Q18. Which exchange, once handling most Bitcoin trades, collapsed in 2014 after losing 850,000 coins?
Answer: Mt. Gox
💡 Mt. Gox began as a trading site for the card game Magic: The Gathering — its name is short for 'Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange.'
Q19. Beyond blocking bots, which 2007 tool secretly helped digitize old newspapers, one word at a time?
Answer: reCAPTCHA
💡 Its inventor, Luis von Ahn, later sold it to Google and went on to found the language-learning app Duolingo.
Q20. Which free breach-checking website did security researcher Troy Hunt launch in December 2013?
Answer: Have I Been Pwned
💡 The site's name riffs on 'pwned' — hacker and gamer slang for being defeated, most likely born from a keyboard typo for 'owned.'
Q21. First held in Vancouver in 2007, which contest challenges researchers to break software live?
Answer: Pwn2Own
💡 The first Pwn2Own was created partly to disprove the popular belief that Macs were immune to serious security flaws.
Q22. Written by a 15-year-old in 1982, which Apple II program is called the first widely spread virus?
Answer: Elk Cloner
💡 Every 50th boot, Elk Cloner didn't damage anything — it just displayed a short poem about itself on screen.
Q23. Written in 1986 by brothers running a Lahore computer shop, what's the first PC-compatible virus?
Answer: Brain
💡 The brothers behind it say they only meant to stop customers from pirating their medical software, not cause lasting damage.
Q24. Spotted in November 2008, which worm's huge Windows botnet has unidentified creators, as of 2026?
Answer: Conficker
💡 Despite infecting machines in over 190 countries, it was only ever activated once, for a fairly minor spam campaign.
Q25. First held in July 1997, which Las Vegas security conference runs days before its hacker cousin?
Answer: Black Hat
💡 Founder Jeff Moss later served on a US Homeland Security advisory council for over a decade.
Q26. In October 1995, which browser maker launched what's considered the first modern bug bounty program?
Answer: Netscape
💡 The phrase 'bug bounty' itself was coined by one of the company's support engineers earlier that same year.
Q27. Which cereal's toy whistle matched AT&T's 2600Hz tone, letting 1970s phreakers call long-distance free?
Answer: Cap'n Crunch
💡 Phone phreaker John Draper took his own nickname, 'Captain Crunch,' from that same whistle trick.
Q28. Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir teamed with which MIT cryptographer in 1977 to publish RSA?
Answer: Adleman
💡 Rivest reportedly worked out the algorithm's core idea overnight after a bout of insomnia, sketching most of it out by daybreak.
Q29. A $250,000 Microsoft bounty helped catch which teen behind the destructive 2004 Sasser worm?
Answer: Sven Jaschan
💡 Jaschan told investigators he'd built an earlier worm, Netsky, hoping it would actually clean infected PCs of rival malware.
Q30. A 1990s US probe accused Phil Zimmermann of illegally 'exporting' which free encryption tool?
Answer: PGP
💡 The three-year investigation was dropped after Zimmermann's source code was published as a printed book, which cannot be export-restricted.
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