The number of compromised accounts is an interesting metric to measure the impact of a cyber attack (here a list of the top 20 most devastating breaches occurred in 2015), but there are cases in which single individuals or organizations become victims of hackers for a specific purpose: take the money (as much as possible) and (possibly) run.

This year has seen many different ways to accomplish this task: one-time fraudulent money transfers, dating scams, or long lasting sophisticated campaigns (just like the Carbanak example). Different ways and different outcomes either, since, unfortunately for the attackers, not all the operations turned into an happy ending for them.

In the following gallery (after the Read More Tag you also find the table and chart) I have collected the top 10 hacks happened in 2015 which resulted in the maximum “revenue” for the attackers (and loss of money for the victims). In several cases they were successful, in other cases the alleged authors are about to be sentenced, in all cases, the attackers showed no mercy in their purpose to steal as much as possible from their designated victims.

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