Several computer security issues from 2010 caused problems for many people.

Knowing about the security issues of the past, however, might make it easier for people to avoid such problems in 2011.

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If you suspect that you have encountered something similar to these stories, then you’ll want to beef up your computer security to help ensure that nothing happens to your system, software, or cloud services in the coming year.

Operation Aurora

Technically Operation Aurora occurred in 2009, but the public did not learn about it until Google posted a message about the security breach in January 2010. The cyber attack, according to Google and many other organizations came from China. The Chinese government, however, claimed that it had nothing to do with any security leaks or attacks.

Regardless of who was responsible, the attacks affected numerous high-profile companies, including Yahoo!, The Dow Chemical Company, Rackspace, and Adobe Systems Inc. This might have allowed the attack’s perpetrators to gather private information or disrupt cloud services.

Stuxnet

Stuxnet is probably one of the scariest pieces of malware ever created. Stuxnet is a worm that was designed to infiltrate industrial plants such as nuclear facilities in Iran. Although it isn’t the first piece of malicious software that has infiltrated industrial plants, it was the first to spy on activities for a period of time and then start to gain control of the equipment.

At first, Iran, where 60 percent of Stuxnet-infested computers were located, claimed that they were unaffected by the worm. Eventually, though, they admitted that the worm had caused some significant problems that led to setbacks in their nuclear program.

Here You Have

Here You Have is a computer worm unleashed on Windows users by a hacker going by the name “Iraqi Resistance.” Iraqi Resistance was able to fool many people into downloading the worm by sending it as an email attachment with a PDF extension. Once the recipient opened the file, the worm sent copies of itself to everyone in the recipient’s contact list. This allowed the worm to spread quickly.

When Here You Have began showing up in inboxes on September 9, 2010, many people worried that the Iraqi Resistance wanted to use the worm to disrupt life in the U.S. In later interviews, though, the hacker claimed that he did it to protest the burning of Korans at a church in Florida

These three stories received a significant amount of media coverage in 2010. Instead of sweeping these stories under the rug and forgetting about them, it makes more sense to learn from them. In a world in which computers have an active role in almost every aspect of everyday life, people must know what risks they face.

After all, the above stories could have been much worse than they were. Stuxnet could have turned on nuclear reactors in Iran, causing massive deaths. Here You Have could have been a much more malicious worm that deleted software and disrupted cloud services to millions of people in the United States. Only by learning from the security threats of the past can people prepare for those that will come in the new year.