Archive
October 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
Halloween has just gone and here it is Part II of the October 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline covering the second half (15-31) of this month.
From an Information Security Perspective, the 10th month of 2011 has been characterized by Duqu, the brand new Advanced Persistent Threat dubbed “The Sun Of Stuxnet”, whose echo is far from being silent (a brand new 0-day vulnerability targeting Windows Kernel has just been discovered in the Malware Installer). Duqu affected the timeline in two circumstances: not only the malware was discovered, but also an Indian Provider called Web Werks had some servers seized from a Data Center in Mumbai because they were discovered to be involved in the C&C communication of the infected endpoints.
Other noticeable events of the month involved:
- The wave of alleged Cyber Attacks from China against Japan Parliament and Embassies and also against Canadian Finance and Treasury Board. These were not the only Cyber Events allegedly affecting China in October: even if occurred months before, news were reported that the attack against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries led to the theft of sensitive data, moreover other 760 organizations worldwide were attacked with the same methodology used for RSA Breach and originating from China as well.
- A new tide of Hacktivism by Anonyomous and Antisec, encouraged from the OccupyWallStreet Movement, including a dramatic face-to-face of Anonymous Mexico against Las Zetas one of the most powerful Mexican Drug Cartel.
A particular rank in this month is deserved by Israel and Sweden, the first reported a huge data breach (affecting 9,000,000 users) occurred in 2006, while the latter suffered a Black October with a data leak involving nearly 200,000 users of the social platform bloggtoppen.se including Politicians and Journalists. At this point is clear that the cold Sweden won the Prize for the “Hottest Breach of The Month”.
Also Facebook was targeted with an alleged dump of 10,000 accounts, nothing if compared with the 600,000 compromised logins per day that the social network admitted to suffer).
According to my very personal estimate (based on the indications from the Ponemon’s insitute) the cost of the breaches for this months (in all those cases where enough information was available) is around $500 million, excluding the massive data breach in Israel reported today but occurred in 2006.
As usual, this Timeline was compiled with Useful Resources by:
- Cyber War News
- DATALOSSdb
- Naked Security
- Office Of Inadequate Security (DataBreaches.net)
- Softpedia
- The Hacker News
- Threatpost
And my inclusion criteria do not take into consideration “simple” defacement attacks (unless they are particularly resounding) or small data leaks.
|
Date |
Author |
Description |
Organization |
Attack |
|
Oct 16 |
Fatal Error |
UNESCO E-Platform Domain
The E-Platform domain of one of the Biggest Organizations: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) gets hacked and defaced by Fatal Error Crew hackers. |
Defacement |
|
|
Oct 17 |
10,000+ FaceBook accounts
A Hacking Crew From Nepal called TeamSwaStika hacks more than 10,000 facebook accounts. The hacking crew declares next target will be Nepal Government website and e-governance for Freedom. Estimated cost of the breach is $2,140,000. |
Account Hacking (Phishing?) |
||
|
Oct 17 |
? |
Sesame Street’s Youtube Channel
Sesame Street had its YouTube channel hacked on Sunday, and its highly popular child-friendly videos of muppets like Kermit the frog and the Big Bird replaced with hard core porn movies. |
Account Hacking |
|
|
Oct 17 |
? |
NHS Direct Twitter Account
NHS Direct, the UK helpline which provides expert health advice via the telephone and internet, has had its Twitter account taken over by spammers promoting an Acai Berry diet. |
Account Hacking |
|
|
Oct 18 |
TurkisH -RuleZ |
proXPN
proXPN, one of the famous VPN client based on OpenVPN Service, is hacked by TurkisH-RuleZ. |
Defacement |
|
|
Oct 19 |
? |
Gameloft
Gameloft, a Paris-based video game company that’s a leading mobile-game developer, acknowledges that a security breach has prompted it to pull the plug on one of its Web sites, the Order and Chaos online site. |
SQLi? |
|
|
Oct 19 |
? |
Duqu
In a blog post, Symantec explains it came across the first samples of a new malware infecting some computer systems in Europe that appears to be very similar to Stuxnet. More analysis shows the malware is a “simple” keylogger using the same Stuxnet Technology |
N/A |
APT |
|
Oct 19 |
? |
A FAQ on the official forum of the Lord Of The Rings Community On Line reveals that the site was breached although no financial data has been obtained by the attackers. |
SQLi? |
|
|
Oct 20 |
? |
Phishing The Phisher
Finally someone decides to give a lesson to a phisherm by hacking the phishing website with a message educating the potential victims. |
Phishing |
|
|
Oct 21 |
Vikram Pandit (Citigroup CEO)
Mobile phone number and home address of Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, have been placed on the web by hacking group CabinCr3w in retaliation for the cuffing of protesters at an Occupy Wall Street demo. In their online statement the hackers say that they had accessed the data – which also included family information and some financial figures – and uploaded it online in response to events during the recent anti-bank protests on Wall Street. |
N/A |
||
|
Oct 21 |
|
Law Enforcement Agencies
Anonymous and Antisec broke their apparent October silence and renewed the tradition of the Friday Dumps against law enforcement agencies releasing a 600MB data dump of confidential data belonging to Law enforcement agencies. A couple of days later an AntiSec hacker tells police in a phone call that boredom drove him to hack their website. |
|
Defacement |
|
Oct 22 |
|
40 Child Porn Websites
As part as what they call #OpDarknet, Anonymous takes down more than 40 darknet-based child porn websites over the last week. They also leak personal details of 1500 users. Detalils on “AnonMessage” and “BecomeAnonymous” YouTube channels. |
40 child Porn Websites |
SQLi DDoS |
|
Oct 23 |
? |
Microsoft’s Official YouTube Channel
Hackers take control of Microsoft’s official YouTube Channel (24,000+ subscribers), remove the company’s videos and replace them with videos of their own. Neither Microsoft nor Google (which owns YouTube) have disclosed information on how the security breach was perpetrated. |
N/A |
|
|
Oct 23 |
One Hit Play
@DiabloElite dumps 1008 accounts from onehitplay.com, with no other reason beside to show the need of a stronger security. All the accounts have been stored as plain text. Estimated cost of the breach is around $214,000. |
SQLi? |
||
|
Oct 23 |
Xbox A new hackers’ crew @DestructiveSec dumps some Xbox Live accounts. |
SQLi? |
||
| Oct 24 |
? |
cheaptickets.nl
The database of CheapTickets.nl (containing 715,000 customers) is leaked. Stolen information include 1,200,000 tickets and 80,000 passport numbers. Total cost of the breach might exceed $153 million. |
SQLi? |
|
|
Oct 24 |
Intra Web Security Exploit Team |
LG Australia Web Site
One of the Australian websites belonging to global electronics giant LG (lge.com.au) is hacked by a collective calling itself the Intra Web Security Exploit Team. The attackers replaced the site with some lightly-obfuscated JavaScript pretending to be conducting an injection attack. |
Defacement, Simulated SQli |
|
|
Oct 24 |
Malicious Employee |
Israely Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare
Employee with access to the Population Registry has been discovered to steal the details of over 9 million residents and then passed them to someone else. Estimated cost of the breach is nearly $2 billion. |
Malicious Access |
|
|
Oct 24 |
|
760 Organizations Worldwide
Brian Kerbs publishes in his blog a list of companies whose networks were shown to have been connecting to the same control infrastructure that was used in the attack on RSA. The first victims appear to have begun communicating with the attacker’s control networks as early as November 2010. According to the list 760 other organizations had networks compromised with some of the same resources used to hit RSA and almost 20 percent of the current Fortune 100 companies are on this list. |
760 Organizations Worldwide |
APT |
|
Oct 25 |
? |
bloggtoppen.se
The usernames and passwords of around 90,000 accounts at Bloggtoppen.se have been made public after a hacker attack against the website. Several journalists and politicians are among the bloggers whose log-in details have been published. On Oct 26, the Aftonbladet newspaper reported that a further 57 other websites had also been hacked, and the login details of up to 200,000 people are at risk. Estimated cost of the breach is around $42 million. |
SQLi? |
|
|
Oct 25 |
Chinese Hacker? |
Japanese Parliament
According to local media reports, hackers were able to snoop upon emails and steal passwords from computers belonging to lawmakers at the Japanese parliament for over a month. PCs and servers were infected after a Trojan horse was emailed to a a Lower House member in July. The Trojan horse then downloaded malware from a server based in China – allowing remote hackers to secretly spy on email communications and steal usernames and passwords from lawmakers. |
APT |
|
|
Oct 25 |
|
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a high-tech military contractor, which suffered an attack from hackers earlier this year, is reported to have lost sensitive data related to defence equipment including fighter jet planes and nuclear power plant plans, according to The Ashai Shimbun. Once again suspects are directed to China. |
|
APT |
|
Oct 25 |
Inside Error |
United States Department Of Education
Highly sensitive information (including SSN) belonging to around 5,000 students was exposed after a computer error causing a federal government student loan website to reveal the data: a glitch in the website allowed students who were logged in to freely view the data of other scholars. Fortunately, the site was compromised only for 7 minutes at most, but it is possible that some users were able to steal sensitive information. Estimated cost of the breach is around $ 1 million. |
Inside Error |
|
|
Oct 26 |
? |
awurval.se
314 job seekers’ e-mail addresses and clear-text passwords acquired and dumped. Estimated Cost of the breach is around $67,000. |
SQLi? |
|
|
Oct 26 |
? |
Mobile Tele Systems
MTS is a primary Mobile Operator in Russia with more than 70 million subscribers. Personal data of 1.6 million mobile phone users appeared online in the second such leak in three months. The database, posted on Zhiltsy.net, included the full names and phone numbers of MTS subscribers in St. Petersburg and Bashkortostan, as well as residential addresses and passport data for some of them. According to MTS the database goes back to 2006 and most numbers are no longer valid. Estimated cost of the breach could potentially achieve $300 million. |
N/A |
|
|
Oct 26 |
nationmultimedia.com
@_V4ND dumps what they say is a teaser of accounts obtained from nationmultimedia.com in what appears to be another havij or similar SQLi vun tool based attack. The leak contains user emails and passwords in clear text. |
SQLi |
||
|
Oct 26 |
Robert Delgado |
Massive Identity Theft
Robert Delgado, a 40 years old California man, was sentenced to eight years in prison for identity theft after federal police GPS-tracked his phone and discovered a hard drive with over 300,000 victim profiles during a raid of his home. Estimated Cost of the thiet (not including purchases made with stolen data) is around $65 million. |
300,000 frauded users |
Bank Fraud |
|
Oct 26 |
Pakistani Hacker |
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)
Another occurrence of the Cyberwar between Pakistan and India: A Pakistani hacker “KhantastiC haX0r” hacks into the official website of India’s leading telecom Company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). |
Defacement |
|
|
Oct 27 |
Law Enforcement Authorities
@_f0rsaken a member of @TeaMp0isoN publishes a list of websites utilized by law enforcement authorities that are supposed to be vulnerable to MSAccess SQL injection attacks. A number of six sites that are listed are supposedly utilized by the police for their updates, the cybercriminals urging Occupy Wall Street supporters to take them down. |
Law Enforcement Authorities |
MSAccess SQLi |
|
|
Oct 27 |
|
Oakland Police Department Web Site
Cyber activists associated with Anonymous target the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and other law enforcement agencies that participated in a controversial crackdown against OccupyOakland protestors with a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack against the department’s website. Moreover According to TG Daily, the infamous collective is offered a $1,000 reward for anyone who can provide information on an officer that allegedly injured a war veteran that was taking part in the protest. |
DDoS |
|
|
Oct 27 |
? |
Clarinda Bank Iowa
In a letter dated Tuesday, Oct. 25, bank vice president Jon Baier notifies specific customers of a data breach. The letter states the bank was not provided details of the security compromise, but to protect the impacted debit card accounts, replacement cards with new numbers were ordered. The number of affected users is unknown. |
N/A |
|
|
Oct 27 |
|
Japanese Embassies
There are new reports that dozens of diplomatic computers Japanese embassies abroad were infected with malware this Summer. The news comes on the heels of recent news about malicious software attacks on Japanese defense contractors and the Japanese Parliament. A report in a local Japanese publication, The Daily Yomiuri, places the infected diplomatic computers in Canada, China, France, Myanmar, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the United States. Again China is suspected since a China Link is found on the malware. |
APT |
|
|
Oct 27 |
|
U.S. Government Satellites
Bloomberg reports that Computer hackers, possibly from the Chinese military, interfered with two U.S. government satellites four times in 2007 and 2008 through a ground station in Norway, according to a congressional commission. |
|
N/A |
|
Oct 28 |
|
Canadian Finance and Treasury Board
Ottawa Citizen reveals that, in Jan 2011, the Canadian Finance and Treasury Board’s networks were targeted by hackers in an attempt to steal sensitive information about the potash industry even though Finance and Treasury Board representatives denies it. It looks that the hackers were actually foreign, the first clues indicating that the attack originated from China. |
APT |
|
|
Oct 28 |
PayFail |
PayPal Executives’ Contact Information
In what looks to be the first of a number of “name and shame” postings, an individual or individuals posting as “PAYFAIL” upload some personal information on dozens of former and current PayPal executives. The dumped data do not seem to be particularly sensivite, nevertheless, although deleted three times so far, the original statement keeps on appearing on pastebin. |
N/A |
|
|
Oct 28 |
? |
Again on Duqu
Two workers at an Indian web-hosting company called Web Werks tell Reuters that last week officials from India’s Department of Information Technology seized several hard drives and other components from a server hosted on a Mumbai Data Center, that security firm Symantec Corp indicated as communicating with computers infected with Duqu. |
APT |
|
|
Oct 29 |
El Paso County Community College
@DestructiveSec hacks the El Paso Country Community College, defacing the web site and dumps some data. |
SQLi? |
||
|
Oct 29 |
|
Las Zetas (Mexican Drug Cartel)
Anonymous Mexico faces one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the World, the Las Zetas Mexican Drug Cartel. In a video they warn the Cartel to release one of their members kidnapped during a street protest, otherwise the hacker group will disclose (or dox) the identities of members of the cartel including corrupted politicians and policeman. Another example of an hacking action with huge real aftermaths in terms of possible deadly retaliations. |
Mexican Droug Cartel |
SQLi? |
|
Oct 29 |
|
Dominican Republic Police
As part of their Spanish Solidarity Saturday Anonymous release a pastebin document containing a list of finds and vulnerabilities on the Dominican Republic Police system and some other sites too. They also left a website defaced. |
|
Several Vulns, Defacement |
|
Oct 31 |
3xp1r3 cyber army |
hi5ads.com
A hacker group going by the name of 3xp1r3 cyber army dumps two separate pastes with respectively 5,065 and 3,149 account details to www.hi5ads.com. The leaks contain emails and plain text passwords. Estimated cost of the breach is around $680,000. |
SQLi |
|
|
Oct 31 |
3xp1r3 cyber army |
Bangla TV
The Same group hacks Bangla TV and releases 1,517 usernames and clear-text password. Estimated cost of the breach is around $320,000. |
SQLi |
|
|
Oct 31 |
ScreamDevz |
Penguin Elite
A group or individual dubbed ScreamDevz hacks Club Penguin Elite Database and dumps nearly 400 usernames, emails and MD5 hashed passwords. Estimated cost of the breach is around $80,000. |
SQLi |
|
|
Oct 31 |
Chinese Government Web Site
@TehMaskz, a member of @ChaoticSec defaces a web site belonging to Chinese Government (at the time of writing http://www.wfaic.gov.cn/index.html is still defaced). In the same circumstance other 9 sites all over the World are defaced. |
Defacement |
||
|
Oct 31 |
One Hit Play
@ChaoticSec hacks One Hit Play (once again) and releases more than 1000 User information, including emails, passwords, and usernames. Estimated cost of the breach is around $214,000. |
SQLi |
||
|
Oct 31 |
comitet.ru
@DeleteSec attacks comitet.ru and dumps more than 2000 records with email and passwords. Estimated cost of the breach is around $420,000 |
SQLi |
||
| Oct 31 | plusline.org
@DeleteSec attacks plusline.org and dumps more than 1000 records with email and passwords. Nearly in contemporary the same group dumps 700+ accounts from several sites. Estimated cost of the breach is around $420,000. |
SQLi |
||
|
Oct 31 |
Mr. DarkCoderz |
Adult Site
Another occurrence of hackers dumping data from adult sites. Estimated cost of the breach is around $43,000. |
Adult Site |
SQLi? |
Related articles
- October 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- Just For Reference… (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
September 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
Here it is the second part of my traditional monthly Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I available here). From an information Security Perspective the main events of this month were the infamous Diginotar breach which led to Bankrupt for the Dutch Company and also the BEAST attack to SSL, two events which, together, thumbed the Infosec Community in its stomach.
Of course these events did not divert the attention of hackers who kept on to carry on attacks against different targets.
The Anonymous continued their campaign: although mainly focused on the #OccupyWallStreet Operation (in which a Senior Officer who used pepper spray against protestors was “doxed”, they targeted several governments including Mexico, Austria, (where they also performed an unconfirmed hack against an health insurance Firm targeting 600,000 dumped users) and Syria. In particular the latter attack triggered a retaliation by Syrian Electronic Soldiers against the prestigious Harvard University.
Chronicles also report a Japan defense contractor hit by hackers, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, (China denied its involvement on the attack), another Twitter Account hacked by The Script Kiddies (this time against USA Today), an indirect attack perpetrated against (through) Oracle by infecting its MySQL.com domain with downloadable malware and, last but not least a massive defacement of 700,000 sites hosted by Inmotion.
US Navy was also victim of defacement.
As far as the prize for the “Most Expensive Breach of the Month” is concerned, the laurel wreath is undoubtedly for SAIC (Science Applications International Corp.) which lost a tape database backup containing data of 4,900.000 users with an estimated cost of approximately 1 billion of bucks…
As usual, useful Resources for compiling the table include:
- Cyber War News (but it looks like it gave up to post reports on Cyber Attacks on 25 September 2011)
CNET Hackers Chart(unfortunately it is not up-to-date since 24 August 2011).- DATALOSSdb
- Dark Reading
- Naked Security
- Office Of Inadequate Security (DataBreaches.net)
- The Hacker News
My inclusion criteria do not take into consideration simple defacement attacks (unless they are particularly resounding) or small data leaks.
Update: On 09/30/2011, Betfair reported a 3.15 million records breach with a total estimated cost of 1.3 billion USD winning the laurel wreath of the most expensive breach of the month.
| Date | Author | Description | Organization | Attack |
| Sep 16 |
|
Websites of several Mexican government ministries As part of OpIndipendencia, websites of several Mexican government ministries, including Defense and Public Security, are teared down in the same day of the symbolic beginning of Mexico’s independence from Spain. |
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DDoS |
| Sep 16 | Mikster |
Clubmusic.com
Clubmusic.com, a worldwide dj website. is hacked and the leak dumped on pastebin. |
SQLi | |
| Sep 16 | Sec Indi Security Team |
Official Website of The United States Navy An hacker crew called Sec Indi Security Team Hacker uploads a custom message on the server to warn a WebDav vulnerability. |
![]() |
WebDav Vulnerabilty |
| Sep 16 | ? | California State Assembly More than 50 employees of the California State Assemby, including some lawmakers, have been warned that their personal information might have been obtained by a computer hacker. |
![]() |
? |
| Sep 17 | ? |
Intelligence And National Security Alliance Names and email addresses of hundreds of U.S. intelligence officials have been posted on an anti-secrecy website. On Monday Sep 10 INSA published a major report warning of an urgent need for cyberdefenses. Within a couple of days, in apparent retaliation, INSA’s “secure” computer system was hacked and the entire 3,000-person membership posted on the Cryptome.org website |
![]() |
N/A |
| Sep 17 | ? |
Fake FBI Anonymous Report A Fake FBI Psychological profile of the Anonymous group is published. Although not a direct cyber attack, this event can be considered an example of psychological hacking and a “sign of the times” of how information and counter information may play a crucial role in hacking. |
|
SQLi? |
| Sep 18 | Texas Police Anonymous/Anti-sec releases a document containing a list of about 3300 members of the Texas Police Association |
|
N/A | |
| Sep 19 |
? |
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan’s biggest defense contractor, has revealed that it suffered a hacker attack in August that caused some of its networks to be infected by malware. According to the firm, 45 network servers and 38 PCs became infected with malware at ten facilities across Japan. The infected sites included its submarine manufacturing plant in Kobe and the Nagoya Guidance & Propulsion System Works, which makes engine parts for missiles. |
![]() |
APT |
| Sep 19 | City Of Rennes TeaMp0isoN takes responsibly to hack the official website of The City Of Rennes (France) via a tweet. They also publish the reason of hack on the defacement page. |
Defacement | ||
| Sep 19 |
? |
Hana SK Card Co., a South Korean credit card firm, announces that Sep 17, some 200 of its customers’ personal information has been leaked. Total cost of the breach is $42,800. |
Hana SK Card |
SQLi? |
| Sep 20 |
? | Former USSR Region Source report that at least 50 victim organizations ranging from government ministries and agencies, diplomatic missions, research institutions, and commercial entities have been hit in the former Soviet Union region and other countries in an apparent industrial espionage campaign that has been going on at least since August 2010.The advanced persistent threat (APT)-type attacks — dubbed “Lurid” after the Trojan malware family being used in it — has infected some 1,465 computers in 61 countries with more than 300 targeted attacks. |
APT | |
| Sep 20 |
Shad0w | Fox Sports Website Fox Sports website, on of the most visited Websites in the world (rank 590 in Alexa) gets hacked. An Hacker named “Shad0w” releases SQL injection Vulnerability on one of the sub domain of Fox Sports and exploit it to extract the database. Leaked database info posted on pastebin. Vulnerable link is also posted together admin password hashes. |
SQLi? | |
| Sep 22 | Core Security Technologies Another security Firm target of hacking: Core Security Technologies is hacked by an hacker called Snc0pe, who defaces some websites belonging to the firm. Mirror of the hack can be seen here. |
N/A | ||
| Sep 24 | ? |
UKChatterbox
Popular IRC service UKChatterbox advises users to change their passwords following a series of hacks which culminated in an attack that may have compromised user details. The password reset follows on from a succession of outages previously attributed to maintenance upgrades, back to the start of the summer. In a notice to users, UKChatterbox advises users to change their passwords and not to re-use them on other sites. The number of hacked account is unknown. |
N/A | |
| Sep 25 |
Seven Major Syrian Cities and Government Web Sites The Anonymous unleash a chain of defacement actions against the Syrian Government, hacking and defacing the official sites of seven major Syrian cities, which stayed up in their defaced version for more than 16 hours. The defacement actions kept on the following day in which 11 Syrian Government Sites were defaced as part of the same operation. |
Defacement | ||
| Sep 25 | ? |
Indira Gandhi International Airport
Although happened three months ago, it turns out that a ‘technical snag’ hittinh operations at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) T3 Terminal was caused by a “malicious code” sent from a remote location to breach the security at the airport. |
APT | |
| Sep 26 | Inmotion Hosting Server 700,000 websites hosted on InMotion Hosting network are hacked by TiGER-M@TE. The hackers copied over the index.php in many directories (public_html, wp-admin), deleted images directory and added index.php files where not needed. List of all hacked 700,000 sites here. |
Defacement | ||
| Sep 26 | Austrian Police The Austrian Anonymous branch publishes the names and addresses of nearly 25,000 police officials, raising fears for officers’ personal security. An Austrian Interior ministry spokesman said the information came from an “association closely related with the police”. Estimated cost of the breach is around $ 5,400,000. |
SQLi? | ||
| Sep 26 | USA Today Twitter Account
The USA Today Twitter account is hacked and starts to tweet false messages mentioning the other accounts hacked by the authors of the action: the Script Kiddies (already in the spotlight for hacking the FoxNews Twitter Account at the Eve of 9/11 anniversary) |
![]() |
Account Hacking | |
| Sep 26 |
? |
MySQL.com
MySQL.com website is struck by cybercriminals, who hacked their way in to serve up malicious code to visiting computers with a Java exploit that downloaded and executed malicious code on visiting Windows computers. Brian Krebs reports that just few days before, he noticed on a Russian underground website that a hacker was offering to sell admin rights to MySQL.com for $3000. MySQL.com receives almost 12 million visitors a month (nearly 400,000 a day). |
Java Exploit to install malware | |
| Sep 26 | Harvard University In retaliation for the defacements performed by the Anonymous targeting Syria, Syrian Electronic Soldiers deface the website of the prestigious Harvard University. The same group came in the spotlight during July and August for defacing Anonoplus engaging a “de facto” cyberwar against The Anonymous. |
Defacement | ||
| Sep 26 | ? |
#Occupywallstreet The month of September is characterized by the OccupyWallStreet Operation, started on September, the 17th and still ongoing. Although not directly configurable as an hacking action, it may rely on the support of the Anonymous who “doxed” a senior police who controversially usec pepper spray against a group of female protesters. |
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N/A |
| Sep 27 | COGEL, Council On Governmental Ethical Law Once again in this month,Snc0pe claims another resounding action. This time the alleged target is the official website of The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL). He posts a message on pastebin, along with the database download link. |
SQLi? | ||
| Sep 28 | Tiroler Gebietskrankenkasse (TGKK) AnonAustria in the spotlight again after the resounding hack against Austrian Police. This time the victim is an health insurance firm Tiroler Gebietskrankenkasse (TGKK) whose database of some 600,475 medical records AnonAustria claims to have hacked. The databse includes some celebrities. The total cost of the breach is around $128,500,000.00. |
SQLi? | ||
| Sep 29 | ? |
SAIC (Science Applications International Corp.) SAIC, one of the Pentagon‘s largest contractors reveals to have discovered a data breach occurred a couple of weeks before, affecting as many as 4.9 million patients who have received care from military facilities in San Antonio since 1992. The breach involved backup computer tapes from an electronic health care record. Some of the information included Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and private health information for patients in 10 states. Statement of the data breach here Estimated cost of the breach is around $ 1 billion. |
Car Burglary | |
| Sep 30 | ? |
Laptop Virus Repair
Although not resounding as the one which targeted MySQL.com, here it is another example of a website infected with malicious code targeting a free antivirus cloud based service. |
Laptop Virus Repair |
Malicious Code |
| Sep 30 | ? |
Betfair
Betfair reports a leak including not only the payment card details of most of its customers but also “3.15m account usernames with encrypted security questions”, “2.9m usernames with one or more addresses” and “89,744 account usernames with bank account details”. The incident occurred on 14 March 2011 but was announced only 18 months later. Estimated cost of the breach is around $1.3 billion. |
? |
September 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
So here it is, also for this month, the first part of My Cyber Attacks Timeline covering the first half of September.
Apparently It looks like the wave of the Anonymous attacks that characterized August has stopped. Even if several isolated episodes occurred, their impact was slightly lower than the previous months.
Probably the most important security incident for this month was the Diginotar Hack, not only because the Dutch Certification Authority has been banned forever by the main browsers and OSes but also because all the authentication model based on CAs is under discussion. Moreover once again a cyber attack has been used as a mean of repression. This incident is a turnkey point for information security but in my opinion also the DNS hacks by Anonymous Sri Lanka and Turkguvenligi are noticeable since they reinforce the need for a quick adoption of DNSSEC.
For the first time not even the Linux Operating System (an open world) was immune from hackers: both the Linux Kernel and the Linux Foundation Web Sites were hacked during this month, two episodes that Penguin Lovers will remember for a long time.
Easily predictable an attack recalling 9/11 carried on against the Twitter Account of NBC News was also reported.
Other noticeable events: three huge data breaches were reported, four attacks with political motivations targeting India, Nigeria, Colombia, and the Russia Embassy in London were perpetrated and another security vendor (Panda Security) was indirectly targeted.
The remainder of the month was characterized by many smaller attacks (mostly defacements and data leaks) and an actress (Scarlett Johansson) was also victim of data leaks.
Useful Resources for compiling the table include:
- Cyber War News
- CNET Hackers Chart
- DATALOSSdb
- Naked Security
- Office Of Inadequate Security (DataBreaches.net)
- The Hacker News
And my inclusion criteria do not take into consideration simple defacement attacks (unless they are particularly resounding) or small data leaks.
| Date | Author | Description | Organization | Attack |
| Sep 1 |
? |
The site of Kernel.org suffered a security breach leading which caused the server to be rooted and 448 credential compromised. Although it is believed that the initial infection started on August the 12th, it was not detected for another 12 days. |
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rootkit (Phalanx) |
| Sep 1 | Apple, Symantec, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.
The Sri Lankan branch of Anonymous claims to have hacked into the DNS servers of Symantec, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and several other large organizations over the past few days, posting the news and records of its exploits on Pastebin. |
DNS Cache Snoop Poisoning | ||
| Sep 1 | ? |
Birdville Independent School District
Two students hack into their school district’s server and accessed a file with 14,500 student names, ID numbers, and social security numbers. Estimated cost of the breach is around $3,000,000. |
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| Sep 2 | ![]() |
Texas Police Chiefs Association As usual happens on Fridady, Texas Police Chiefs Association Website is hacked by Anonymous for Antisec Operation. Hacker defaced their website and posted 3GB of data in retaliation for the arrests of dozens of alleged Anonymous suspects. According to Hackers the site has been owned for nearly one month. |
SQLi? | |
| Sep 2 | EA Game Battlefield Heroes One of the most famous games over the world Battlefield Heroes developed by EA Games is hacked by a hacker named “Why So Serious?” who leaks the User Login passwords on pastebin |
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SQLi? | |
| Sep 2 | vBTEAM Underground Vbteam.info, the underground vBulletin Hacking website is hacked by “Why So Serious?“, who leaks 1400+ accounts of the Vbteam.info forum in pastebin. |
SQLi? | ||
| Sep 3 | Nomcat |
Indian Government
An Indian Hacker named “nomcat” claims to have been able to hack into the Indian Prime Ministers Office Computers and install a Remote Administration Tool) in them. He also Exposes the Vulnerability in Income Tax website and Database Information. |
SQLi? | |
| Sep 4 |
Popular Websites: : Daily Telegraph, The Register, UPS, Vodafone Popular websites including The Register, The Daily Telegraph, UPS, and others fall victim to a DNS hack that has resulted in visitors being redirected to third-party webpages. The authors of the hack, a Turkish group called Turkguvenligi, are not new to similar actions and leave a message declaring this day as World Hackers’ Day. |
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DNS Hijacking | |
| Sep 5 | Mobile App Network Forum Mobile APP Network Forum is Hacked by “Why So Serious?”. He leaks over 15.000 accounts of the community (Forum) on Pastebin in two parts (Part 1 and Part 2). |
SQLi? | ||
| Sep 5 |
European Union Institute For Energy and Transport One of the Sub domain of European Union (Institute for Energy) is hacked and Defaced by Inj3ct0r. Hackers deface the web page, release some internal details and leave a message against Violence in Lybia and Russian influence in Ukraine. |
Defacement | ||
| Sep 5 | Cocain Team Hackers | United Nations Sub Domain of Swaziland United Nations Sub-Domain of Swaziland is hacked and defaced by Cocain Team Hackers. |
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Defacement |
| Sep 5 | Uronimo Mobile Platform The Uronimo Mobile platform is hacked by Team Inj3ct0r. They leak the web site database and release on Pastebin internal data including Username, Hash Password, emails and Phone Numbers of 1000 users. Estimated Cost of the Breach is $214,000. |
SQLi? | ||
| Sep 6 | Comodo Hacker |
Diginotar
The real extent of the Diginotar breach becomes clear: 531 bogus certificates issued including Google, CIA, Mossad, Tor. Meanwhile in a pastebin message Comodo Hacker states he own four more CAs, among which GlobalSign which precautionally suspends issuance of certificates. |
Several Vulnerabilities | |
| Sep 7 | ? |
Beaumont Independent School District
The superintendent of schools for Beaumont Independent School District announces that letters are being mailed to parents of nearly 15,000 of its 19,848 students to inform them of a potential breach of data that occurred recently. Inadvertently, private information including the name, date of birth, gender, social security number, grade and scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) exam of students who were in the third through 11th grades during the 2009-2010 school year–were potentially exposed. Estimated cost of the breach is $3,210,000. |
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Human Mistake |
| Sep 7 | ? |
Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, Calif.
A medical privacy breach leads to the public posting on a commercial Web site of data for 20,000 emergency room patients at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., including names and diagnosis codes. The information stayed online for nearly a year from one of its vendors, a billing contractor identified as Multi-Specialty Collection Services, to a Web site called Student of Fortune, which allows students to solicit paid assistance with their schoolwork. Estimated Cost of The Breach is $4,280,000. |
Human Mistake | |
| Sep 9 | Comodo Hacker |
GlobalSign
After suspending issuing certificates, GlobalSign finds evidence of a breach to the web server hosting the www website. The breached web server has always been isolated from all other infrastructure and is used only to serve the http://www.globalsign.com website. |
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| Sep 9 |
Comodo Hacker |
Google
As consequence of the infamous Diginotar Breach Google advises its users in Iran to change their Gmail passwords, and check that their Google accounts have not been compromised. Google also indicates that it is directly contacting users in Iran who may have been hit by a man-in-the-middle attack. |
Man In The Middle | |
| Sep 9 | NBC News
The NBC News Twitter account is hacked and starts to tweet false reports of a plane attack on ground zero. The account is suspended and restored after few minutes. |
Trojan Keylogger via Email | ||
| Sep 9 | ? |
Samsung Card
Data of up to 800,000 Samsung Card clients may have been compromised after an employee allegedly extracted their personal information. The Breach was discovered on Aug. 25 and reported to police on Aug. 30. It is not clear what kind of information has been leaked, maybe the first two digits of residence numbers, the names, companies and mobile phone numbers were exposed. Estimated cost of the breach is $171,200.000. |
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Unauthorized Access |
| Sep 10 | ? |
BuyVIP (Amazon Owned)
Although not officially confirmed, BuyVIP users received an e-mail informing that their database had been hacked. Apparently, the website had been offline for a couple days and it looks like that not only names and email addresses were retrieved, but also birth dates, real shipping addresses as well as phone numbers. |
SQLi | |
| Sep 11 | ? |
Linux Foundation Few weeks after the kernel.org Linux archive site suffered a hacker attack, the Linux Foundation has pulled its websites from the web to clean up from a security breach. A notice posted on the Linux Foundation said the entire infrastructure including LinuxFoundation.org, Linux.com, and their subdomains are down for maintenance due to a security breach that was discovered on September 8, 2011. |
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SQLi? |
| Sep 11 | AryansBook.com Anonymous leaks the complete database from a well known nazi website AryansBook.com and posts the content on The Pirate Bay. This is a fight towards racism of any kind. |
AryansBook |
SQLi? | |
| Sep 12 | ? |
Bitconitalk Forum An unknown hacker uses a zero day flaw to steal email addresses, hashed passwords and read personal messages from the bitcointalk.org forum. Forum administrators said the attacker gained root access on 3 September and was able to run arbitrary PHP code not detected until the attacker injected “annoying JavaScript” into the forum pages a week later: the Javascript splashed actor Bill Cosby across the forums and replaced all references to BitCoin with CosbyCoin. |
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0-day exploit in SMF |
| Sep 12 | ? |
Nigerian Government Website Nigerian Government Website is hacked and defaced by Brazilian Hackers that leave a message in the main page. |
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Defacement |
| Sep 12 | ? |
Vacationland Vendors
A hacker gains unauthorized access to the card processing systems at Wilderness Waterpark Resort and improperly acquires 40,000 credit card and debit card information. Estimated Cost of the Breach is $8,560,000. |
N/A | |
| Sep 12 | X-Nerd | Panda Security
Another Security Company Hacked: a hacker going by the name of X-Nerd hacks and defaces the Pakistan Server of a very well known security software website: Panda Security. |
SQLi? | |
| Sep 12 | ? |
Russian UK Embassy Just before Prime Minister David Cameron’s first visit to Moscow, the website belonging to the Embassy Of The Russian Federation in London was taken down by hackers. It seems as the attack was launched in sign of protest to the upcoming visit after a 5-year break in which no British leader went to Moscow. |
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DDoS |
| Sep 13 | Cyb3rSec |
thetvdb.com Cyb3rSec dumps a list of 3500+ Accounts from the forum thetvdb.com. |
SQLi? | |
| Sep 13 | top100arena.com Albanian hackers belonging to Albanian Cyber Army exploit one of the biggest Game Arena site “Top100″ database using SQL injection attack. They leak the database on mediafire. |
SQLi | ||
| Sep 14 | President of Bolivia (presidencia.gob.bo) SwichSmoke crew hacks the site belonging to President of Bolivia and dumps the leaked data on pastebin. |
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Various Exploits | |
| Sep 14 | ? |
uTorrent.com
The uTorrent.com |
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SQLi |
| Sep 14 | ? |
Bright House Networks Bright House Networks, the sixth largest owner and operator of cable systems in the U.S., has sent a letter to customers warning that they may have been exposed after servers used to process Video on Demand (VOD) were breached. |
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| Sep 14 | ? |
Scarlett Johansson
Also an actress may be victim of hackers: The FBI investigate reports that nude photos of a famous celebrity (allegedely Scarlett Johansson) have been leaked onto the web. The day before Twitter was flooded with messages claiming to link to naked pictures of her, which were allegedly stolen from her iPhone by a hacker earlier this year. |
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| Sep 15 | Stohanko |
Various Sites More than 101 sites, with huge amount of data and personal information which ranges from emails, phone numbers, to full names and addresses, have been hacked by an hacker dubbed Stohanko. At this link a list of the hacked sites and the links to dumped data. |
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