Evolution of Cyber Attacks and Their Economic Impact

  With the widespread use of internet devices worldwide, many individuals hope to profit from exploits within these devices for monetary gain from or losses to unsuspecting victims and corporations. Through research results,  we explore the origins of cyber-attacks and how they have had economic impacts on small businesses, large corporations,  and countries around the world. This article demonstrates weakness in the current software and shows the increasing number of publications associated with the impacts that were a  direct result of these vulnerabilities. The article includes trends of  increasing or decreasing number of attacks carried out on a  timeline to show the overall impact on different industry types.  This article provides details of the types of attacks used, their  origination, and the methods in which they were implemented. It  discusses tools that have been used to mitigate these attacks and  the existence of attacks that are still active to the date of  publication.