Large corporations[edit]
Large corporations are common targets. In many cases this is aimed at financial gain through identity theft and involves data breaches such as the loss of millions of clients' credit card details by Home Depot,[15] Staples,[16] and Target Corporation.[17]
Not all attacks are financially motivated however; for example security firm HBGary Federal suffered a serious series of attacks in 2011 from hacktivist goup Anonymous in retaliation for the firm's CEO claiming to have infiltrated their group, [18][19] and Sony Pictures was attacked in 2014 where the motive appears to have been to embarrass with data leaks, and cripple the company by wiping workstations and servers.[20][21]