Archive
1-15 March 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Other troubles for system administrators: March is confirming the 2013 dangerous trend with several high profile breaches against industrial, financial and governmental targets.
The first two weeks of March have begun with the breach to Evernote, and continued with (among the others) the third phase of the infamous Operation Ababil, targeting U.S. Banks and an alleged Chinese attack against the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Additional noticeable events include a wave of DDoS attacks against several Czech Republic’s targets (belonging to media, news and financial sector), a breach suffered by the NIST Vulnerability Database (unfortunately not an isolated example of the attacks against US governmental targets happened in these two weeks) and also the leak of 20,000 records from an Avast! German distributor.
Last but not least, the examined period has also confirmed the role of Twitter as the new mean to make resounding attacks against single individuals or organizations. Qatar Foundation, Saudi Aramco, and France 24 are only several of the organizations fallen victims of accounts hijacking.
Of course, these are only the main events, feel free to scroll down the list to analyze in detail what happened in these two weeks.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011, 2012 and now 2013 (regularly updated). You may also want to have a look at the Cyber Attack Statistics, and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).
Once again, a special thanks to Kim Guldberg AKA @bufferzone for continuously advising me about significant cyber events through the Submit Form! Much Appreciated!
16-28 February 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline
It is time for the summary of the second half of February, two weeks of remarkable cyber attacks against high-tech giants, massive breaches and Twitter Account Hijackings.
Probably the most resounding events of this period (maybe more for the high profile of the victims than for the actual effects) are the two attacks, allegedly originating from China, (with a common root cause, the compromising of an iPhone developer forum) carried on against Apple and Microsoft.
But not only the two high-tech giants, other illustrious victims have fallen under the blows of hacktivists and cyber criminals. The list is quite long and includes Bank of America, American Express, Casio, ZenDesk, cPanel, Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation, etc.).
Last but not least, the unprecedented trail of Cyber attack against Twitter Profile belonging to single individuals (see Donald Trump) or Corporations (Burger King and Jeep). Maybe it is time to change the passwords…
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011, 2012 and now 2013 (regularly updated). You may also want to have a look at the Cyber Attack Statistics, and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).
A special thanks to Kim Guldberg AKA @bufferzone for continuously advising me about significant cyber events through the Submit Form! Much Appreciated!
16-31 January 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Two Weeks Living Dangerously! I have no other words to describe this second half of January (first two weeks here) that has shown an unprecedented level of attacks! And if a good day starts with the morning, this will be a very troubled year from an information security perspective.
Not only the peaks of DDoS attacks against the US Banks have reached an unstoppable peak, but, most of all, at the end of the month details have been unveiled about a massive cyber-espionage campaign allegedly orchestrated by Chinese hackers against some major US media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Bloomberg News.
A very very long list of targets this month, with some high profile victims such as the U.S. Sentencing Commission, whose web site has been hacked twice and turned into an Asteroid game, but also Renault Argentina that suffered 37,000 accounts leaked.
To summarize this month is really impossible, you just have to scroll down the timeline to realize the hacking spree in this January 2013.
If this trend continues, I will have to decrease the frequency of publication…
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts). To do so, you can use this form.
16-31 December 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
The year is gone, and here it is the last Cyber Attack Timeline for 2012 (first part here).
The most important cyber-events of this second part of December can be considered: the third phase of the operation Ababil carried on by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters against U.S. Banks, the attacks of the Anonymous collective against the Westboro Baptist Church, and, last but not least the Cyberwar echoes coming from Iran.
The wave of DDoS attacks carried on by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has taken down Six U.S. Banks under the fists of DDoS attacks apparently unstoppable. Instead the Anonymous seem to have changed tactic in their personal fight against the Westboro Baptist Church, they did not limit to DDoS the church’s website, but also performed a couple of Twitter account takeover against some key persons (with the collaboration of UGNazi members).
Instead, on the Cyberwar front, Iran confirms to be a danger zone, with some reports of a new Wiper and a simil-Stuxnet malware (even if this second news has been downplayed in a second moment.
Other noticeable news include an alleged breach to Yahoo!, a massive breach against a Chinese HP domain and a strange, controversial breach against Verizon FiOS (with data apparently leaked six months ago).
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts). To do so, you can use this form.
October 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Click here for the first part covering the Cyber Attacks from 1 to 15 October 2012.
Here is the timeline for the main Cyber Attacks in October 2012. A month that has been characterized by hacktivism and also by several remarkable cyber crime operations.
For sure the next days will be hard for taxpayers of South Carolina, whose Department of Revenue has been targeted by foreign hackers able to access records of 3.6 million of individuals. But hard days are going to come also for banks: not only the trail of DDoS attack against U.S. Banks has continued even in the second half of the month (although different groups took credit for them), but also, on the cyber crime front, Citigroup has lost 1 million of bucks because of a loophole exploited by a ring of 13 individuals. Different motivations, same lesson: bank security needs a dramatic improvement.
Moving to hactkivism, nothing new under the sun. The pale sun of October has enlightened several operations targeting governments (Greece and Italy above all, to reflect the delicate situation of these two countries) and organization all over the world…
As usual after the jump you will find all the references.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).
Read more…
16-30 September 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Part One with 1-15 September 201 Timeline Here.
September is over and it’s time to analyze this month from an Information Security perspective with the second part of the Cyber Attack Timeline.
Probably this month will be remembered for the massive outage of six U.S. Banks (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo and PNC ) caused by a wave of DDoS attack carried on by alleged Muslim hackers in retaliation for the infamous movie (maybe this term is exaggerated) “The Innocence of Muslims”.
China has confirmed its intense activity inside the Cyber space. Alleged (state-sponsored?) Chinese hackers were allegedly behind the attack to Telvent, whose project files of its core product OASyS SCADA were stolen after a breach, and also behind a thwarted spear-phishing cyber attack against the White House.
Adobe suffered a high-profile breach which caused a build server to be compromised with the consequent theft of a certificate key used to sign two malware strains found on the wild (with the consequent necessary revoke of the compromised key affecting approximately 1,100 files).
Last but not least, the Hacktivism fever has apparently dropped. September has offered some attacks on the wake of the #OpFreeAssange campaign, and a new wave of attacks at the end of the month after the global protests set for September, the 29th, under the hashtag of #29s.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).
16 – 31 August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Here the first part with the timeline from 1 to 15 August 2012.
Here we are with the second part of the August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline. A second part of the month that has been characterized by hacktivism, most of all because of the so-called OperationFreeAssange, which has targeted many high-profile websites.
Among the targets of the month, Philips has been particularly “unlucky”. The Dutch giant has been the victim of three Cyber Attacks, even if there are several doubts about the authenticity of the hacks.
But maybe the biggest operation of the month is the #ProjectHellFire, carried on by the collective @TeamGhostShell, that has unleashed something as 1 million of accounts belonging to different sectors (banks, government agencies, consulting firms, law enforcement and the CIA). And the group promises new action for this Fall and Winter.
The Middle East confirms to be very hot, with a new Cyber Attack, probably another occurrence of Shamoon, targeting RasGas, yet another Oil Company.
Just one note: of course it is impossible to track all the targets of the #OpFreeAssange. You can find a complete list at cyberwarnews.info.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).
August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
The first half of August has seen a revamping of Hacktivism, encouraged by the takedown of the famous Torrent Tracker Demonoid (and the consequent OpDemonoid targeting most of all Ukrainian sites), but also encouraged by OpAustralia, the wave of attacks against Australian Web Sites carried on against the Australian Internet Surveillance Law (apparently the latter operation was successful since the controversial law has been put on standby).
But Hacktivism was not the only “trend topic” for this period. The Middle East continues to be the cradle for unexpected cyber weapons threats. In August, two new occurrences of allegedly state sponsored malware: Gauss, a cyber-espionage tool targeting bank transaction, and Shamoon , a destructive malware targeting energy companies.
These are probably the most remarkable Cyber Events of this period, which has also seen a purported giant breach targeting Pearl.fr, a French e-commerce website whose 729,000 accounts, together with over 1 million bank transaction details, have been subtracted by hackers.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).
February 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Find here February 2012 Cyber Attacks Timelime Part I.
With a small delay (my apologies but the end of February has been very busy for me and not only for Cybercrooks as you will soon see), here it is the second part of my compilation with the main Cyber Attacks for February 2012.
Easily Predictable, the Hacktivism is still the main concern for System Administrators, in particular for the ones of Stratfor who suffered a huge leak of 5 million of emails.
On the same front, the threats of the Anonymous for the Friday actions have come true and as a matter of fact Law Enforcement Agencies suffered other remarkable breaches in this month: Infragard for the second time and also Interpol (a new entry) that was taken down after the arrest of 25 members of the collective. Anti ACTA protest also continue to shake Europe as also the delicate economical and social situation in Greece.
Last but not least, this month has also seen an unforgettable leak, affecting potentially more than 1.000.000 Youporn users.
As usual, the chart does not include the events related to Middle East Cyber War Timeline, that you may find at this link, as they “deserve” a dedicated timeline.
After the jump you find all the references, follows @paulsparrows for the latest updates on a regular basis and also have a look to the 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline Master Index.
November 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
The second half of November has confirmed the trend seen in the previous report covering the first half of the month. The period under examination has confirmed a remarkable increase in Cyber Attacks from both a quality and quantity perspective.
Although the month has been characterized by many small attacks, several remarkable events have really made the difference.
Among the victims of the month, Finland deserves a special mention in this unenviable rank: the second half of the month has confirmed the emerging trend for this country, which suffered in this period two further breaches of huge amounts of personal data, for a global cumulative cost, computed on the whole month, around $25 million.
But Finland was not the only northern European country hit by cybercrookers (maybe the term cyberprofessionals would be more appropriate): Norwegian systems associated with the country’s oil, gas and energy sectors were hit with an APT based cyber attack resulting in a loss of sensitive information including documents, drawings, user names and passwords.
But once again the crown of the most remarkable breach of the month is placed upon the head of South Korea which suffered another huge data dump affecting users of the popular MMORPG “Maple Story” affecting theoretically 13 million of users, nearly the 27% of the Korean population, for an estimated cost of the breach close to $2.8 billion.
The list of affected countries this month includes also 243,089 Nigerian users, victims of the hack of Naijaloaded, a popular forum.
Microsoft has been another victim in this November, with a phishing scam targeting Xbox Live users. Details of the scam are not clear, although each single affected user in U.K. might have lost something between £100 and £200 for a total cost of the breach assimilable to “million of Pounds”.
November will make history for showing for the first time to information security professionals the dangers hidden inside the SCADA universe (and not related to Nuclear Reactors). The echo of Stuxnet and Duqu is still alive, but this month was the the turn of SCADA water pumps, that have suffered a couple of attacks (Springfield and South Houston), the first one allegedly originated from Russia and the second one from a “lonely ranger” who considered the answer from DHS concerning the first incident, too soft and not enough satisfactory. My sixth sense (and one half) tells me that we will need to get more and more used to attacks against SCADA driven facilities.
The Anonymous continued their operations against governments with a brand new occurrence of their Friday Releases, targeting a Special Agent of the CA Department and leaking something like 38,000 emails. Besides from other some sparse “small” operations, the other remarkable action performed by the Anonymous collective involved the hacking of an United Nations (old?) server, that caused personal data of some personnel to be released on the Internet.
November Special mentions are dedicated (for opposite reasons) to HP and AT&T. HP for the issue on their printers discovered by a group of Researchers of Columbia Univerity, which could allow a malicious user to remotely control (and burn) them. AT&T deserved the special mention for the attack, unsuccessful, against the 1% of its 100 million wireless accounts customer base.
In any case, counting also the “minor” attacks of the month, the chart shows a real emergency for data protection issues: schools, e-commerce sites, TVs, government sites, etc. are increasingly becoming targets. Administrators do not show the deserved attention to data protection and maybe also the users are loosing the real perception of how much important is the safeguard of their personal information and how serious the aftermaths of a compromise are.
As usual, references for each single cyber attack are reported below. Have a (nice?) read and most of alle share among your acquaintances the awareness that everyone is virtually at risk.
Related articles
- November 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
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08/13/2011 - My Post on Android Malware Mentioned on Engadget.
04/14/2011 - The Article Smart Grid: L'ultima Frontiera del Cybercrime published on ICT Security Magazine May 2011.
03/14/2011 - Security Summit 2011: Paolo Passeri guest at Round Table "Mobile Security: Rischi, Tecnologie, Mercato"
02/14/2011 - The Article Gears of Cyberwar published on ICT Security Magazine January 2011.
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