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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!
1-15 January 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline
So here we are with the first Cyber Attacks Timeline for 2013 covering the first half of January.
Apparently the new year has begun with an intense activity by Cyber Crooks. Hacktivists and Cyber Criminals had many time to spend in front of their keyboards during the holiday break, and as a consequence the number of breaches with more than 10.000 accounts compromised is incredibly high. WWF China, the City of Steubenville, Ohio and The German Chamber of Commerce are only three examples of institutions that suffered massive breaches during the beginning of this year.
But the massive breaches are not the only remarkable events of this period: the waves of DDoS Attacks against US banks continued (and promise to extend also in the next weeks), Kaspersky Lab discovered a new massive Cyber Espionage Campaign dubbed “Red October”, and also the Japan Farm Ministry was hit by yet another Cyber Attack, allegedly originating from China…
If this is only the beginning… 2013 promises to be pretty much troubled for system administrators…
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.
1-15 December 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Christmas is coming quickly, we have just passed the first half of December, and hence it’s time for the first update of the Cyber Attacks Timeline for December.
The Team GhostShell has decided to close the year with a clamorous Cyber Attack, and hence,as part of the project ProjectWhiteFox, has leaked 1.6 million of accounts from several organizations all over the world. This is the most important event for this first part of the month that apparently has shown a decreasing trend. Hacktivists are still focusing their attention (and their keyboards) to Israel, and Cyber Criminals are maybe preparing for the Christmas attacks.
However, the main events of the first half of December, are related to hacktivism, besides the above mentioned cyber attack, it worth to mention the new wave of massive DDoS attacks against US Banks (up to 60 Gbps of peak according to Arbor Networks), but also the leak of a ITU document on the future of Deep Packet Inspection and the attacks in Egypt, Mexico and India.
Last but not least: this two weeks also offered a giant attack to the famous Social Platform Tumblr and also the warning of the Switzerland’s national security agency (NDB) that a huge amount of secrets may have been leaked by a disgruntled IT Administrator.
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.
1-15 November 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics
This November 2012 seems really to be endless from an Information Security Perspective. We have assisted so far to a remarkable number of Cyber Attacks.
As usual is it time to provide the partial snapshot of November taken from the corresponding Cyber Attack Timeline and covering the first half of the month. Please notice that the stats below do not include the following events:
- The massive leak of Team Ghostshell for ProjectBlackStar (2.5 million accounts leaked from different targets in Russia);
- The Cyber Attacks executed by the Anonymous and the other affiliated collectives for OpIsrael.
The above attacks have been executed on a much wider scale so counting the singe events would be senseless. Anyway other Sites have done an excellent Job for the aggregated stats of those attacks, see for instance OZDC.net for Project Black Star, and OpIsrael.
With this in mind let us proceed to examine the Daily Trend Of Attacks. Please notice the peak of November 5 (no need to comment it!):
Of course the Motivations Chart reflects this trend with the 60% of the attacks considered in my sample led by hackitivism. Apparently no different motivations than Hacktivism and Cyber Crime have been observed in this period.
I use not to take into considerations defacements, but this time their impact on the past two weeks has been very high. This is clearly shown in the Techniques Chart, where they rank at the first place, together with SQL Injection, with the 33% of occurrences:
As usual, the Target chart shows that Governmental targets rank at number one, immediately followed by targets belonging to Industry. Please notice the peak of Torrent Sites. This is due to the waves of DDoS Attacks carried on by Zeiko Anonymous, only because he has not been able to obtain an invite to a close torrent forum. Nothing to add: the reasons for hacking may range from Cyberwar to “simple” whims.
Please, as usual, take the sample very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence does not pretend to be exhaustive but only aims to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape”.
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 (regularly updated), 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).
Related articles
- October 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (hackmageddon.com)
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).
Defacement “Tarantina Style”
The city of Taranto is famous worldwide for its delicious mussels “Tarantina Style” with tomato soup, chilly pepper and garlic. Unfortunately in these days Taranto is also the unvoluntary protagonist of the ILVA affaire, a paradoxical situation typical of Italy.
On July the 31st, The ILVA steel plant, the largest of Europe, has been placed under precautionary judicial seizure, and eight current or former executives under house arrest. This is the consequence of an inquiry into environmental pollution. Unfortunately such a similar decision is leading to heavy consequences for the steel plant workers who went on the warpath, and for the unions as well who have announced an indefinite strike.
A so delicate and complex situation could not be ignored by hacktivists of the infamous collective Anonymous who, in name of OpItaly&OpGreenRights, yesterday have hacked and defaced the Taranto Municipality website and left a message directed to workers against the steel plant activity. The hacktivists have also dumped portion of a database of Ilva and Riva Group (the corresponding holding) on pastebin.
The latest example of the strict interconnections between the real and cyber worlds, even if a so complex and potentially devastating situation deserves much more in-depth reflections (about the national economic strategies and policies), than a “simple” (maybe fashion-motivated) defacement.
Thanks to Cybwerwarnews.info for publishing the news.
Winds Of Cyber War From The Middle East
Approximately a couple of weeks ago, an Israeli hacker called You-r!-k@n, one of the early contenders of the Middle East Cyber War, had defaced the Iran Energy Water Website. The attack was claimed as a form of cyber protest (and cyber retaliation) against Iranian institutions executed by the same author.
Yesterday, two weeks later, with the same motivations, the same hacker has targeted and defaced 91 Iranian sites, including several government and education sites together with several important companies.
All the affected sites (at the time of writing the ones listed below are still defaced) show the same message against the “terror” and the nuclear strategy of Iran together with an Israeli flag.
According to the author, the list of the victims include:
- The Tehran’s urban development (http://ashayer.gov.ir) and other web sites with domain gov.ir
- A large number of sites faculties and institutions, for example one of the largest universities in Iran: (http://sama-saveh.ac.ir/info1-28.htm);
- The websites of several large electronic companies (http://gaamelectric.ir/info1-28.htm);
- The websites of one of the largest gas and oil company (http://satrap.ir/info1-28.htm);
According to the original statement of You-r!-k@n:
This is an attack against Iran than support terrorism and developing nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.
The situation between the two hot countries of the Middle East continues to be tense, and cyberspace is not an exception.
Iran Energy Water Website Defaced By An Israeli Hacker Against The Terrorist Attack in Burgas
You-r!-k@n keeps on his personal battle against Iran.
The latest target is the official website of Iran Energy Water (tw.org.ir), which has been defaced, showing, in several sections, of the main page, a message against the Iran Nuclear Program and against the recent event in Bulgaria where five Israeli tourists (and their local driver) were killed in a terrorist attack in the Black Sea city of Burgas. At the time of writing the web site is unavailable, showing the well-familiar IIS7 Splash Screen (in spite of the embargo and the alleged Iranian Cyber Autarchy).
As you know, Israel blamed Iran for the latter event (backed by American Officials), and hence, easily predictable, the dispute between the two states has (once again) crossed the boundaries of the cyber world (but a defacement is quite a simple question in comparison with Stuxnet and The Flame).
The time of the Middle East Cyber War is well behind, nevertheless cyber events targeting both countries, whether state-sponsored or carried on by lone rangers, continue to happen at a constant rate.
July 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
Update 08/02/2012: July 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
Although the number of attacks has considerably diminuished, the first half of July has left several high-profile attacks which deserverd huge attention, exposing in theory more than 2,000,000 individuals. Yahoo! Voice, Android Forums, Nvidia, Formspring, Billabong and ASUS are several of the well-known names that were victims of the high-profile breaches in the first two weeks of July.
World Health Organization and PBS (once again) were also illustrious victims of Cyber Attacks.
Besides these remarkable events, it looks like the actions carried on by the Law Enforcement agencies in the last period led to some results since the number of incidents looks undoubtably smaller than the previous months.
For what concerns the cyber attacks driven by hacktivism, it is particularly important to notice #OpPedoChat, still ongoing, which caused many pedophiles to be exposed, in several cases with unpredictable consequences, as in Belgium where a far-right official resigned after Anonymous’ Paedophilia Claims.
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 (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).
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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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