Archive
December 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
As usual, here it is my compilation of December Cyber Attacks.
It looks like that Christmas approaching is not stopping hackers who targeted a growing number of organizations including several security firms (Kaspersky, Nod 32 and Bitdefender) even if in secondary domains and with “simple” defacements.
Cyber chronicles report of Gemnet, another Certification Authority Breached in Holland (is the 12th security incident targeting CAs in 2011) and several massive data breaches targeting Finland (the fifth this year, affecting 16,000 users), online gambling (UB.com affecting 3.5 million of users), Telco (Telstra, affecting 70,000 users), and gaming, after the well known attacks to Sony, Sega and Nintendo, with Square Enix, which suffered a huge attacks compromising 1,800,000 users (even if it looks like no personal data were affected).
Online Payment services were also targeted by Cybercrookers: a Visa East European processor has been hit by a security breach, but also four Romanian home made hackers have been arrested for a massive credit card fraud affecting 200 restaurants for a total of 80,000 customers who had their data stolen.
As usual, hacktivism was one of the main trends for this first half of the month, which started with a resounding hacking to a Web Server belonging to ACNUR (United Nations Refugees Agency) leaking more than 200 credentials including the one belonging to President Mr. Barack Obama.
But from a mere hactvism perspective, Elections in Russia have been the main trigger as they indirectly generated several cyber events: not only during the election day, in which three web sites (a watchdog and two independent news agencies) were taken down by DDoS attacks, but also in the immediately following days, when a botnet flooded Twitter with Pro Kremlin hashtags, and an independent forum was also taken down by a further DDoS attacks. A trail of events which set a very dangerous precent.
Besides the ACNUR Hack, the Anonymous were also in the spotlight (a quite common occurrence this year) with some sparse attacks targeting several governments including in particular Brazil, inside what is called #OpAmazonia.
Even if not confirmed, it looks like that Anonymous Finland might somehow be related to the above mentioned breach occurred in Finland.
Other interesting events occurred in the first two weeks of December: the 0-day vulnerability affecting Adobe products, immediately exploited by hackers to carry on tailored phishing campaigns and most of hall, a targeted attack to a contractor, Lockheed Martin, but also another occurrence of DNS Cache Poisoning targeting the Republic of Congo domains of Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others.
Last but not least, the controversial GPS Spoofing, which allegedly allowed Iran to capture a U.S. Drone, even the GPS Spoofing on its own does not completely solve the mistery of the capture.
Other victims of the month include Norwich Airport, Coca Cola, and another Law Enforcement Agency (clearusa.org), which is currently unaivalable.
As usual after the page break you find all the references.
Another Certification Authority Breached (the 12th!)
This year is nearly at the end but it looks like it is really endless, at least from an Information Security Perspective. As a matter of fact this 2011 will leave an heavy and embarassing heritage to Information Security: the Certification Authority authentication model, which has been continuously under siege in this troubled year; a siege that seems endless and which has shown its ultimate expression on the alleged compromise of yet another Dutch Certification Authority: Gemnet.
Gemnet, an affiliate of KPN, has suspended certificate signing operation after an intrusion on its publicly accessible instance of phpMyAdmin (a web interface for managing SQL Database) which was, against any acceptable best practice, exposed on the Internet and not protected by password. As in case of Diginotar, another Dutch Certification Authority which declared Bankrupt few days after being compromised by the infamous Comodo Hacker, Gamnet has the Dutch government among its customers including the Ministry of Security and Justice, Bank of Dutch Municipalities and the police.
After the intrusion, the attacker claimed to have manipulated the databases, and to allegedly have been able to gain control over the system and all of the documents contained on it, although KPN, claims the documents contained on the server were all publicly available. Moreover the attacker claimed the attack was successful since he could obtain the password (braTica4) used for administrative tasks on the server. As a precaution, while further information is collected about the incident, Gemnet CSP, KPN’s certificate authority division, has also suspended access to their website.
The breach is very different, in purpose and motivations, from the one occurred to Diginotar, at the end of July, which led to the issuance of more than 500 bogus Certificates (on behalf of Google, Microsoft, and other companies). In case of Diginotar the certificates were used to intercept about 300,000 Iranians, as part of what was called “Operation Black Tulip“, a campaign aimed to eavesdrop and hijack dissidents’ emails. For the chronicles, the same author of the Diginotar hack, the Infamous Comodo Hacker, had already compromised another Certification Authority earlier this year, Comodo (which was at the origin of his nickname). In both cases, the hacks were performed for political reasons, respectively as a retaliation for the Massacre of Srebrenica (in which the Comodo Hacker claimed the Dutch UN Blue Helmets did not do enough to prevent it), and as a retaliation for Stuxnet, allegedly developed in a joint effort by Israel and US to delay Iranian Nuclear Program.
But although resounding, these are not the only examples of attacks or security incidents targeting Certification Authorities: after all, the attacks against CAs started virtually in 2010 with the infamous 21th century weapon Stuxnet, that could count among its records, the fact to be the first malware using a driver signed with a valid certificate belonging to Realtek Semiconductor Corps. A technique also used by Duqu, the so called Duqu’s son.
Since then, I counted 11 other breaches, perpetrated for different purposes: eavesdropping (as is the case of the Infamous Comodo Hacker), malware driver signatures, or “simple” compromised servers (with DDoS tools as in case of KPN).
At this point I wonder what else we could deploy to protect our identity, given that two factor authentication has been breached, CAs are under siege, and also SSL needs a substantial revision. Identity protection is getting more and more important, since our privacy is constantly under attack, but we are dangerously running out of ammunitions.
(Click below for references)
Mobile Antiviruses: Malware Scanners or Malware Scammers?
Few days ago Juniper Networks has released a report on the status of Android Malware. The results are not encouraging for the Android Addicted since they show a 472% increase in malware samples since July 2011 (see the infographic for details).
This does not surprising: already in May in its annual Malicious Mobile Threats Report, report, Juniper had found a 400% increase in Android malware from 2009 to the summer of 2010. This trend is destined to further grow since the Juniper Global Threat Center found that October and November registered the fastest growth in Android malware discovery in the history of the platform. The number of malware samples identified in September increased by 28%. whilst October showed a 110% increase in malware sample collection over the previous month and a noticeable 171% increase from July 2011.
As far as the nature of malware is concerned, Juniper data show that the malware is getting more and more sophisticated, with the majority of malicious applications targeting communications, location, or other personal information. Of the known Android malware samples, 55%, acts as spyware, 44%, are SMS Trojans, which send SMS messages to premium rate numbers without the user’s consent.
The reason for this malware proliferation? A weak policy control on the Android market which makes easier for malicious developers to publish malware applications in disguise. From this point of view, at least according to Juniper, the model of Cupertino is much more efficient and secure.
Easily predictable Google’s answer came from the mouth of Chris DiBona, open source and public sector engineering manager at Google. According to DiBona, Open Source, which is widely present in all the major mobile phone operating systems, is software, and software can be insecure. But Open Source becomes stronger if it pays attention to security, otherwise it is destined to disappear. In support of this statement he quotes the cases of Sendmail and Apache, whose modules which were not considered enough secure disappeared or came back stronger (and more secure) than ever.
But DiBona’s does not stop here (probably he had read this AV-test report which demonstrates that free Android Antimalware applications are useless): “Yes, virus companies are playing on your fears to try to sell you bs protection software for Android, RIM and IOS. They are charlatans and scammers. IF you work for a company selling virus protection for android, rim or IOS you should be ashamed of yourself.”
From this point of view Google hopes that Ice Cream Sandwich will lead Android Security at the next level even if some features are raising security concerns among Infosec professionals.
Attacks Raining Down from the Clouds
Update November 24: New EU directive to feature cloud ‘bridge’. The Binding Safe Processor Rules (BSPR) will ask cloud service providers to prove their security and agree to become legally liable for any data offences.
In my humble opinion there is strange misconception regarding cloud security. For sure cloud security is one of the main trends for 2011 a trend, likely destined to be confirmed during 2012 in parallel with the growing diffusion of cloud based services, nevertheless, I cannot help but notice that when talking about cloud security, the attention is focused solely on attacks towards cloud resources. Although this is an important side of the problem, it is not the only.
If you were on a cybercrook’s shoes eager to spread havoc on the Internet (unfortunately this hobby seems to be very common recent times), would you choose static discrete resources weapons to carry on your attacks or rather would you prefer dynamic, continuous, always-on and practically unlimited resources to reach your malicious goals?
An unlimited cyberwarfare ready to fire at simple click of your fingers? The answer seems pretty obvious!
Swap your perspective, move on the other side of the cloud, and you will discover that Security from the cloud is a multidimensional issue, which embraces legal and technological aspects: not only for cloud service providers but also for cloud service subscribers eager to move there platforms, infrastructures and applications.
In fact, if a cloud service provider must grant the needed security to all of its customers (but what does it means the adjective “needed” if there is not a related Service Level Agreement on the contract?) in terms of (logical) separation, analogously cloud service subscribers must also ensure that their applications do not offer welcomed doors to cybercrooks because of vulnerabilities due to weak patching or code flaws.
In this scenario in which way the two parties are responsible each other? Simply said, could a cloud service provider be charged in case an attacker is able to illegitimately enter the cloud and carry on attack exploiting infrastructure vulnerabilities and leveraging resources of the other cloud service subscribers? Or also could an organization be charged in case an attacker, exploiting an application vulnerability, is capable to (once again) illegitimately enter the cloud and use its resources to carry on malicious attacks, eventually leveraging (and compromising) also resources from other customers? And again, in this latter case, could a cloud service provider be somehow responsible since it did not perform enough controls or also he was not able to detect the malicious activity from its resources? And how should he behave in case of events such as seizures.
Unfortunately it looks like these answers are waiting for a resolutive answer from Cloud Service Providers. As far as I know there are no clauses covering this kind of events in cloud service contracts, creating a dangerous gap between technology and regulations: on the other hands several examples show that similar events are not so far from reality:
- On June 2, 2011, during the peak of the LulzSec saga, CloudFlare, the (network and cloud) service provider hosting the web server of the infamous hacking group, was targeted with DDoS attacks, after the group decided to publish information obtained from the Sony Pictures’ website;
- On June 22, 2011, FBI seized some servers from DigitalOne as Ryan Cleary, a 19-year-old suspected of involvement in LulzSec, was arrested. In this circumstance several popular, legitimate websites including Pinboard, a bookmarking service, and Instapaper, a tool for saving web articles, were affected. Moreover the CEO of tje Company declared that, although interested in one of the company’s clients, F.B.I. took servers used by tens of clients;
- On August, the 29th 2011, an Italian security penetration tester discovered some flaws in Google’s servers allowing malicious attackers to launch a distributed denial-of-service attack on a server of their choosing;
- On October, the 12nd 2011, Defence Contractor Raytheon revealed it was the victim of a spear phishing cloud-based attack;
- On October, the 28th 2011, Indian authorities seized computer equipment from a data center in Mumbai as part of an investigation into the Duqu malicious software that some security experts warned could be the next big cyber threat.
Is it a coincidence the fact that today TOR turned to Amazon’s EC2 cloud service to make it easier for volunteers to donate bandwidth to the anonymity network (and, according to Imperva, to make easier to create more places and better places to hide.)
I do believe that cloud security perspective will need to be moved on the other side of the cloud during 2012.
The China Cyber Attacks Syndrome
A w
eek ago, the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive published a report to Congress concerning the use of cyber espionage to attempt to gain business and industrial secrets from US companies. Easily predictable, the results present a frightening picture!
With no surprise it turned out that the biggest dangers and perpetrators of cyber-espionage operations against American business are China and Russia.
- Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage. US private sector firms and cybersecurity specialists have reported an onslaught of computer network intrusions that have originated in China, but the Intelligence Community cannot confirm who was responsible.
- Russia’s intelligence services are conducting a range of activities to collect economic information and technology from US targets.
- Some US allies and partners use their broad access to US institutions to acquire sensitive US economic and technology information, primarily through aggressive elicitation and other human intelligence tactics. Some of these states have advanced cyber capabilities.
Unfortunately the predictions for the near future are not encouraging: the authors of the report judge that the governments of China and Russia will remain aggressive and capable collectors of sensitive US economic information and technologies, particularly in cyberspace.
This is mainly due to three factors: a technological shift with a growing number of devices connected to the Internet (according to a Cisco Systems study, the number of devices connected to the Internet is expected to increase from about 12.5 billion in 2010 to 25 billion in 2015). An economical shift driven by the Cloud Paradigm which requires the information to be ubiquitous and always available and, last but not least, a cultural shift which bring users to a growing use of social media for personal and professional use with a dangerous overlapping.
With these considerations in mind I decided to concentrate on a single table all the attacks with cyber espionage implications reported in 2011 for which China was directly or indirectly (or allegedly) considered responsible. The details (and links) of each single attack can be found on my 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline Master Index (of course the list does not include the infamous Operation Aurora and the attack to G20 during the French Leadership since these events occurred during 2010).
U.S., Canada, Japan and Korea are among the countries hit by the Cyber Attacks from Far East. The most known attack is for sure the one perpetrated against RSA, whose wake affected several U.S. Contractors. Moreover the same attack was not an isolated episode, but the tip of an iceberg hiding 760 affected organizations worldwide.
Shady Rat and the IMF attack were other noticeable events as also the breach reported against the Cyworld the Korean Social Networks in which 37 million users were affected.
A frightening scenario that also generated some resounding fake attacks during 2011 (do you remember the Renault affair?)
A new cold (cyber)war at the gates?
Related articles
- Cyber-espionage attempts on US businesses are on rise (arstechnica.com)
The Beauty (RC4) and The BEAST (TLS)
Hard times for Information Security and for the authentication models it had been built upon. The inglorious falls of SecureID and Certification Authority Authentication models were not enough in this troubled 2011 and now it looks like the last authentication bastion was breached after Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo unleashed their BEAST (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS) attack.
The attack exploits a well known vulnerability on CBC mode encryption algorythms (such as AES and 3DES) which affects SSL and TLS 1.0. CBC mode encryption divides the plaintext in fixed size blocks (usually 128 bits). In this mode of operation each block of ciphertext is not directly encrypted, rather, before undergoing the operation, is XORed with the previous Ciphertext. Of course the first block of the message may not be XORed with any previous Ciphertext and for this reason an hard-guessable random vector, called IV or Inizialization Vector is chosen to inizialize the encryption process.
During an encryption session (think for instance to an HTTPS session) several TLS messages are transmitted inside the same encryption channel and here come the troubles: unfortunately TLS 1.0 implementation does not use a new IV for each TLS message, that is the ciphertext of the last block of the previous message is used as the Inizialization Vector of the new message. Unfortunately this approach limits the unpredictability of the Inizialization vector: an attacker could in theory try to guess some plaintext somewhere in the encryption stream and inject a crafted plaintext so that if the encrypted output of that block corresponds exactly to the ciphertext of the block in which the guessed original message was encrypted, this means that the attacker’s guess was right. The attack is made possible in theory just because the CBC mode use the output of the previous block as the IV for the next plaintext block.
From a more formal point of view a nice and very clear description is reported at this link which I report in the following lines:
Consider the case where we have a connection between Alice and Bob. You observe a record which you know contains Alice’s password in block i, i.e., Mi is Alice’s password. Say you have a guess for Alice’s password: you think it might be P. Now, if you know that the next record will be encrypted with IV X, and you can inject a chosen record, you inject:
X ⊕ Ci-1 ⊕ P
When this gets encrypted, X get XORed in, with the result that the plaintext block fed to the encryption algorithm is:
Ci-1 ⊕ P
If P == Mi, then the new ciphertext block will be the same as Ci, which reveals that your guess is right.
The question then becomes how the attacker would know the next IV to be used. However, because the IV for record j is the CBC residue of record j-1 all the attacker needs to do is observe the traffic on the wire and then make sure that the data they inject is encrypted as the next record, using the previous record’s CBC residue as the IV.
So apparently nothing new under the sun, except the fact the attack scenario is higly unlikely since the attacker should find a way to guess some patterns and inject some well known patterns inside the encrypted channel unless…
Unless the attacker could inject a large amount of known malicious data at a time (in order to limit the guessable plaintext in each block) and use a Web server side method to inject them.
This is exactly where the two main features of the BEAST attack rely: what if an attacker could guess where the encrypted password is located inside the encrypted channel, and split the original block in several 16 bytes blocks in which a single byte contains the original character of the password and the remaining 15 bytes contain the malicious known padding? Quite Easy! The attacker should try “only” 2^8 (256) possible values in order to guess the first character and obtain the same encrypted output than the crafted plaintext. Once guessed the first character, he could obtain the IV for the next block from the ciphertext, and guess the next character of the password in the next block with the same method: the first byte is known to be the first character of the password, the second byte is the unknown quantity and the other 14 bytes contain the malicious known padding. Shifting up to the last block the attacker could obtain the password.
Of course in theory there is still a big issue consisting in the injection of the known pattern in the encryption channel. In order to overcome it the attackers used a method (for which so far few details were disclosed) leveraging Web Sockets, a technology which provides for bi-directional, full-duplex communications channels, over a single TCP Socket. In a meshed-up world, Web Sockets are used for instance when a Web Server redirects a browser to another server to get a certain content (for instance an embedded Image). In Web Socket models, the browser handshakes directly with the remote server and verify if the connection is ok from the first server (origin based consent).
The same article mentioned above delineates how Web Sockets may be exploited to perpetrate the attack:
Say the attacker wants to recover the cookie for
https://www.google.com/. He stands up a page with any origin he controls (e.g.,http://www.attacker.com/. This page hosts JS that initiates a WebSockets connection tohttps://www.google.com/. Because WebSockets allows cross-origin requests, he can initiate a HTTPS connection to the target server if the target server allows it (e.g., because it wants to allow mash-ups). Because the URL is provided by the attacker, he can make it arbitrarily long and therefore put the Cookie wherever he wants it with respect to the CBC block boundary. Once he has captured the encrypted block with the cookie, he can then send arbitrary new packets via WebSockets with his appropriately constructed plaintext blocks as described above. There are a few small obstacles to do with the framing, but Rizzo and Duong claim that these can be overcome and those claims seem plausible.
Although TLS 1.1 and 1.2 introduce a randomizaton of the IV for each message, the dramatic thing is that TLS 1.1 has been published in 2006 but it is far from being commonly adopted. The funny thing is that in order to mitigate the attack Web Servers should use a cipher which does not involve CBC mode, as for instance RC4 (back to the future).
Google servers already use RC4 while Chrome developers are testing a workaround. Will RC4 be enough to save the infosec world from the fall of authentication?
Related articles
- Tor and the BEAST SSL attack (torproject.org)
- Chrome and the BEAST (imperialviolet.org)
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
? |
| 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 |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
? |
| 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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
Various Exploits |
| Sep 14 | ? |
uTorrent.com
The uTorrent.com |
 |
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. |
 |
? |
| 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. |
 |
? |
| 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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? |
Processor Assisted Or OS Embedded Endpoint Security?
Yesterday, September the 13th 2011, the Information Security Arena has been shaken by a couple of announcements earthquakes unleashed by two of the most important players in this market.
The first earthquake was detected in San Francisco, at the Intel Developer Forum, where McAfee announced DeepSAFE, a jointly developed technology from McAfee and Intel that enables to build hardware-assisted security products that take advantage of a deeper security footprint. According to McAfee, sitting beyond the operating system and close to the silicon, DeepSAFE technology allows to gain an additional vantage point in the computing stack to better protect systems. Although initially conceived as an anti-rootkit (and 0-day) technology, McAfee promises that DeepSAFE Technology will be the foundation for its next gen security products, maybe landing also on the Android Platform (but not on Intel’s MeeGo Mobile Platform).
The second earthquake was detected in Redmond where Microsoft announced that antivirus protection will be a standard feature for its next gen flagship OS Windows 8: features from its Security Essentials program, currently available as a separate download for Windows users, will be added to the Windows Defender package already built into Windows, allowing the users to get out-of-the-box protection against malware, along with firewall and parental controls, from within Windows without requiring a separate software. Another new security feature being baked into Windows 8 is protection from bootable USB drives that are infected with malware.
Although easily predictable (even if Microsoft took only 6 years to fully embed Sybari technology inside its OSes after the 2005 acquisition, rumors on a hardware assisted security technology were the pillars of the McAfee acquisition by Intel), these announcements have a potential huge impact on the landscape, both for consumers and more in general for the whole antivirus industry.
As fare as the Micorsoft announcement is concerned, consumers will be happy to find a free “OS-embedded” antimalware solution inside their (favourite ?) desktop operating system, on the other hand the antivirus industry will likely not be happy to have an embedded competitor to fight against (and to disable during the installation of their own products).
Similarly, just like the Operating System, the processor itself is a “necessary evil” for a PC so the other endpoint security vendors will not be happy to fight against a competitor technology which (quoting textual words) allows “McAfee DeepSAFE technology (to) sit beyond the operating system (and close to the silicon) allowing McAfee products to have an additional vantage point in the computing stack to better protect systems.”
Of course all this turmoil on the endpoint security arena looks paradoxical if compared with Google’s assertions according to which, its brand new ChromeOS will need no antivirus at all because of its many built in layers of security. On the other hand it risks to become a turmoil for the consumer who will have soon to face an hard question: will my next operating system need “software embedded” antimalware, “hardware assisted” antimalware or no antimalware at all?
Personally I do not like the idea of a single Microsoft Antivirus for every PC equipped with Windows 8 (a single vulnerability would be enough to infect millions of devices), in the same way I believe that an Operating System without antimalware protection is an unrealistic model which is not compatible with the multi-layer approach of the endpoint security (it is not a coincidence that ChromeOS has already fallen under the blows of a XSS vulnerability.
Similarly I do believe that, in order to avoid (further) Antitrust lawsuits Intel will open its direct access to processor layer to other vendors besides McAfee. On the other hand, in order to obtain the “go-ahead” from the European Commission, Intel promised to ensure that rival security vendors will have access to “all necessary information” to use the functionalities of Intel’s CPUs and chipsets in the same way as those functionalities are used by McAfee, the commission said in a statement…
Otherwise the lawyers seriously risk to be the sole winners of this endpoint revolution.
August 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Here it is the complete list of Main Cyber Attacks for July: definitively it looks like the Dog Days did not stop the Cyber Attacks, which have been particularly numerous during August.
Following the trail of July, an attack against PCS Consultants, another U.S Government contractor opened this hot month, even if the controversial shady RAT affair monopolized (and keeps on to monopolize) the infosec landscape (and not only during the first half of the month). Easily predictable nearly every endpoint security vendor (and McAfee competitors) tend to minimize the event considering it only the latest example of RAT based cyber attacks with no particular features (see for instance the comment by Sophos, Kaspersky and Symantec).
Analogously the Dog Days did not stop hactivism with the infamous hacking group Anonymous (and its local “chapters”) author of several attacks in different countries and most of all of author of a kind of arm wrestling against BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), sometimes carried out with questionable methods. Research in Motion was indirectly involved on the Anonymous Campaign during the London Riot, but also Anonymous was hit by (another) defacement attack carried on by Syrian hackers which affected Anonplus, the alternative Social Network.
South Korea was also hit with other massive breaches (involving also Epson Korea) and a defacement against the local branch of HSBC.
According to my very personal estimates, based on the Ponemon Institute indications, the cost for the data breach for which enough information was available, is around $ 126 million mainly due to the impressive Epson Data Breach.
Useful resources for compiling the table include:
And my inclusion criteria do not take into consideration simple defacement attacks (unless they are really resounding) or small data leaks.
Enjoy the complete list!
| Date | Author | Description | Organization | Attack |
| Aug 1 |
|
Another U.S. Government contractor, PCS Consultants gets hacked by Anonymous & Antisec. Hackers extract website Database and leak it on the internet via Twitter on Pastebin (as usual!). Leaked Data include Admin’s and 110 users emails, plus passwords in encrypted hashes. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 2 | |
Vitrociset
72 hours after the first defacement, Vitrociset, a contractor of Italian Cyber Police, is hacked and defaced again by Anonymous. |
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SQLi? Defacement |
| Aug 3 |  |
United Nations (Shady RAT)
In an interview to Vanity Fair (as to say, information Security is a fashion), a McAfee Security Researcher declares UN and other international institutions have been victims of a large scale Remote Access Tool based attack from a Foreign Country. The attack is dubbed shady RAT and suspects are directed to China. |
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Remote Access Tool |
| Aug 3 |  |
Colombia
Anonymous and Colombian Hackers shut down the websites of Colombia’s president, the interior and justice ministry, the intelligence service DAS and the governing party. The hacker attack was meant as a protest against government censorship. |
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DDoS |
| Aug 3 |  |
The SUN and News Corp. International
Britain’s Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid The Sun sends a message to readers warning them that computer hackers may have published their data online after an attack on the paper’s website last month. A hacker styled ‘Batteye‘ claims to have posted details taken from The Sun on the Pastebin. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 3 |  |
Front National
As a consequence of the Massacre of Oslo, Anonymous France claims to have hacked a server belonging to Front National, leaking a list of 100 leaders of the party |
 |
? |
| Aug 5 | ? |
Eight weeks after a hacker cracked its credit card database, the company’s credit card unit in Japan, Citi Card, reported in a message to its user base that “certain personal information of 92,408 customers has allegedly been obtained and sold to a third party illegally.” Estimated cost of the breach is about $19.8 million. |
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unfaithful outsourcer |
| Aug 6 |  |
Law Enforcement Agencies
After the first attack to Law Enforcement Institutions in July, Anonymous and LulzSec, as part of what they define the ShootingSheriffsSaturday, leak again 10 Gb of Data from the same Law Enforcement Agencies, including private police emails, training files, snitch info and personal info. The attack was made in retaliation for anonymous arrests |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 6 |  |
SAPPE (Sindacato Autonomo Polizia Penitenziaria)
Anonymous defaces the Web Site of SAPPE (Independent Union of Prison Guards) and leaves a message on pastebin (here in italian) claiming more rights for detainees |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 6 |  |
Policia Federal (Brazilian Police)
LulzSec Brazil hacks Brazilian Police and discloses 8 gb of data from what they defined the Pandora’s Box |
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USB Key Stolen? |
| Aug 7 | |
Syrian Ministry of Defense
The Syrian Ministry of defense is hacked by Anonymous which defaces the web site and post a note supporting the Syrian people |
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Defacement |
| Aug 9 |  |
Anonplus (Anonymous Social Network)
In retaliation for the defacement of the Syrian Ministry of Defence, a Syrian Group of hackers dubbed Syrian Electronic Army, has defaced (for the third time), Anonplus, the alternative Social Network in phase of deployment by Anonymous, posting several gruesome images. |
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Defacement |
| Aug 9 |  |
Research In Motion
As an (in)direct consequence of the London Riots, a crew of hackers called TeaMp0isoN defaces The Official BlackBerry Blog after RIM has indicated to assist London police, who are investigating the use of the messaging service in organizing riots, with a “very extensive monitoring of the BlackBerry Messenger model”. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 9 |
|
Operation Satiagraha
As part of Operation Antisec, LulzSec and Anonymous, release 5gb of documents, photos, audio files and videos, exposing that wich was one of the greatest corruption scandals in the recent history of Brazil |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 10 | ? |
University Of Wisconsin Milwaukee
The Social Security numbers of 75,000 students and employees at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee arE exposed after hackers planted malware in a campus server.ty-of-wisconsin-server. Estimated Cost of the Breach is $16 million. |
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APT |
| Aug 10 | ? |
Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx)
The Hong Kong stock exchange (HKEx) halts trading for seven stocks in the afternoon trading session after its website was attacked during the morning trading session. The seven stocks in question were all due to release sensitive results to the website that could impact the price of their stocks. Initially the attack was believed to have compromised the web site. Later it was discovered to be a DDoS. |
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DDoS |
| Aug 12 | Headpuster |
Welt.de
An hacker called Headpuster, to protest against the sale of user data to a third party operator, hacks Welt.de using an SQL Injection (http://boot24.welt.de/index_welt..php?ac =***) and steals a large amount of data including credit card information of 30,264 users from the database He then publishes censored excerpts. Estimated cost of the breach is around $6.5 million. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 12 | ? |
Hong Kong stock exchange (HKEx)
The Hong Kong stock exchange comes under attack for the second day in a row on Thursday. The exchange blamed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against its news web server, hkexnews.hk. A Suspect has been arrested on Aug, the 23rd. |
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DDoS |
| Aug 14 | |
Mybart.org
As part of their #OpBART and #Bart-Action in response to a temporary shutdown of cell service in four downtown San Francisco stations to interfere with a protest over a shooting by a BART police officer, Anonymous attacks the myBART.org website belonging to San Francisco’s BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system. They perform a SQL injection (SQLi) attack against the site and extract 2,450 records containing names, usernames, passwords (plain text), emails, phone numbers, addresses and zip codes. Estimated Cost of the Breach is $524,300. |
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SQLi |
| Aug 15 | ? |
GOMTV.NET
After SK, Another South Korean service provider reports a large-scale data breach of usernames and passwords for subscribers worldwide. This time, it’s the turn of Seoul-based streaming media service GOMTV to suffer a data-spilling intrusion. According to GOM TV, the breach happened early in the morning of Friday 12 August 2011 Korean time; the company sent out a warning email to its subscribers on Sunday 14 August 2011. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 16 | |
Vanguard Defense Industries
Antisec targets Richard Garcia, the Senior Vice President of Vanguard Defense Industries (VDI). During the Breach nearly 4,713 emails and thousands of documents are stolen. The attack has been performed on August the 16th, but, as a consolidated tradtion, the torrent has been released on Friday, August the 19th. |
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Vulnerability in WordPress Hosting Platform |
| Aug 16 |  |
Ebay
Hacker group Cslsec (Can’t stop laughing security) leaks some accounts from Ebay and post them on pastebin. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 17 | |
BART Police
A database belonging to the BART Police Officers Association is hacked, and the names, postal and email addresses of officers are posted online. Over 100 officers are listed in the document posted, as usual, on pastebin. Estimated cost of the breach is $21,400. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 20 |  |
A turkish based hacker hacks and defaces the Korean branch of HSBC, the global banking group. |
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defacement |
| Aug 21 | pr0tect0r AKA mrNRG |
The developer forum section of Nokia Website is hacked by Indian Hacker “pr0tect0r AKA mrNRG“. He was able to deface the site and access to email records. According to an official statement from Nokia a “significantly larger” number of accounts has been accessed although they do not contain sensitive information. |
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SQLi |
| Aug 21 | |
Danish Government
Anonymous Hackers upload a file on Torrent containing the snapshot of the Danish Government database of companies. The snapshot was obtained during the summer of 2011 by systematically harvesting data from the public parts of the cvr.dk website. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 22 | ? |
Epson Korea
Hacking in South Korea: After GOMTV.NET Epson Korea is hit by a massive data breach, involving the personal information of 350,000 registered customers. Hackers break into Epson Korea’s computer systems, and steal information including passwords, phone numbers, names, and email addresses of customers who had registered with the company. Estimated cost of the breach is $74,900,000. |
 |
? |
| Aug 22 | Electr0n |
Libyan domain name registry
Hackers deface the nic.ly website, the main registry which administers .ly domain names (the “.ly” stands for “Libya”) and replace it with anti-Gaddafi message. |
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defacement |
| Aug 22 |  |
Allianceforcebiz.com
@ThEhAcKeR12, an admirer of Anonymous acts independently to breach an outsourced provider and steal a customer list with 20,000 log-in credentials. Many on the list were U.S. government employees. Estimated cost of the breach is around $4,280,000. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 22 |
|
UK MET Police As part of the Murder Military Monday, Metropolitan UK Police is hacked for #Antisec by CSL Security using SQL injection Vulnerability and the vulnerable link is also shown on Twitter and pastebin. Other attacked sites include: USarmy.com, GoArmy.com. |
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SQLi |
| Aug 23 | |
U.S. Government F-Secure discovers that on 17th of July, a military documentary program titled “Military Technology: Internet Storm is Coming” was published on the Government-run TV channel CCTV 7, Millitary and Agriculture (at military.cntv. While they are speaking about theory, they actually show camera footage of Chinese government systems launching attacks against a U.S. target. |
|
DDoS? |
| Aug 24 | |
Cslsec
Another example of Cyberwars between different hacker crews: TeaMp0isoN hacks Cslsec which claimed to be the new LulzSec |
|
Defacement |
| Aug 25 | ? |
U.S. Military Base
Another example of military emails leaked by hackers. |
|
SQLi? |
| Aug 27 | Division Hackers Crew |
Borlas.net
Division Hackers Crew hacks the Database of Borlas.net (Free SMS Site) and leaks the usernames, Passwords, emails and phone numbers of 14800 registered users. As usual, leaked database has been posted on pastenbin. Estimated cost of the breach is $3,167,200. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 28 |  |
Orange.fr
Anonymous Hacker hacks Orange.fr and uploads the database and Site source code backup on file sharing site. |
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SQLi? |
| Aug 29 | Iranian Hackers |
Diginotar
A user named alibo on the Gmail forums posts a thread about receiving a certificate warning about a revoked SSL certificate for SSL-based Google services. The certificate in question was issued on July 10th by Dutch SSL certificate authority DigiNotar. The fake certificate was forged by Iranian Hackers, and revoked immediately. This is the second episode of a MITM attack against Google after the Comodo Affair in May. |
|
Vulnerability |
| Aug 29 | ? |
Gabia (South Korean domain registrar)
Another Cyber Attack in South Korea: Gabia a South Korean domain registrar is hacked on Saturday Aug 27, according to a report Monday by the Korea Herald. The hack exposed over 100,000 domains and 350,000 users data. The information included names, user IDS, passwords and registration numbers. |
 |
? |
| Aug 29 | |
densetsu.com
Sometimes they come back: one of the lulzsec members seems to have made a quick returning hacking a child porn trading forum and leaking over 7000 accounts. |
densetsu.com | SQLi? |
| Aug 30 |  |
Wikileaks (1) Der Spiegel reports that a WikiLeaks file containing the original leaked US State Department cables has inadvertently been released onto the Internet. The documents have not been edited to protect sources, meaning that the lives of informants could be at risk. |
|
? |
| Aug 30 | ? |
Wikileaks (2) The WikiLeaks website, which contains thousands of U.S. embassy cables, has crashed in an apparent cyberattack. The anti-secrecy organization said in a Twitter message Tuesday that Wikileaks.org “is presently under attack.” |
|
DDoS |
| Aug 30 |  |
swgalaxies.net @neatstuffs leaks over 23,000 emails and passwords from a Star Wars Fan Club, and all the passwords are in clear text…sad isnt it? that a website would store so many users information with no security. |
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SQLi? |
The Dangerous Liaisons (Updated)
Did you know that a smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 patent claims? You may easily understand why the $ 4.5 billion auction to buy 6,000 Nortel patents by the consortium formed by Apple, Microsoft, Research in Motion, Sony Ericsson and EMC was so cruel. You may also easily understand why Google, the loser of the Nortel auction, decided to react immediately acquiring Motorola and its patent portfolio made of more than 17,000 approved patents (and another 7,500 patents filed and pending approval) for the large sum of $ 12.5 billion.
Said in few words, the mobile arena is getting more and more agressive and cruel. For this reason, a litte bit for curosity, a little bit for fun, I decided to draw a chart (and a table) showing all the moves of the giant players in this mobile chessboard. Although deliberately incomplete (I did not show in the table the patent saga of NTP Inc. against the rest of the world and the settlement of Motorola vs RIM), it gives a good idea of the dangerous intersections involving partnership, fees, alliances and, most of all, lawsuits… With the strange paradox that some companies (read Apple and Samsung) are enemies before the court, but in the same time business partners.
While visualizing the idea I stumbled upon this similar graph showing the status of the mobile arena on 8 Oct 2010. I decided to use the same layout, omitting some informations, but updating it to the current date. The graph is a little bit confusing, but the confusion of the arrows reflects betten than a thousand words the real situation.
Anyway the war will not stop here: the next targets? Interdigital Inc. with its 8,800 patents which are attracting several bidders such as Apple, Nokia and Qualcomm; and, most of all, Kodak, whose survival depends on the auction of the 10% of its patent portfolio (1,100 patents), valued as high as $3 billion which are vital to compensate the losses estimated in $2.5 billion.
As far as the table is concerned, in order to avoid repetitions, it only shows the status of the lawsuits and alliances from the perspective of Google, Apple and Microsoft. Enjoy your read and the 250,000 patent claims on your smartphone!
| Company | Filed Suit Against | Has technological alliance with | Filed Suite From: |
 |
No one (at least so far!) |  
Of course Google licensees his Mobile OS to HTC and Samsung (in rigorous alphabetical order), and it is the driver for the impressive market share growthof Samsung and HTC.
In an effort to defend Android’s Intellettual Property “to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing”, on Aug 15 2011, Google announced the intention to acquire Motorola Mobility with a $12.5 billion deal. Motorola has nearly 17,000 patents. |
Aug 12 2010: Oracle has filed suit against Google for infringing on copyrights and patents related to Java,. Oracle claimed Google “knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property”. Android uses a light proprietary Java Virtual Machine, Dalvik VM, which, according to Oracle infringes one or more claims of each of United States Patents Nos. 6,125,447; 6,192,476; 5,966,702; 7,426,720; RE38,104; 6,910,205; and 6,061,520. The case is in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Oracle America, Inc v. Google Inc, 10-3561. The lawsuit is still pending and will likely take several months. The trial between Oracle and Google is expected to begin by November and Oracle is seeking damages “in the billions of dollars” from Google. On Aug 1 2011, the judge overseeing the lawsuit Oracle filed over the Android mobile OS has denied Google’s attempt to get a potentially damaging e-mail redacted. |
 |
Mar 2 2010: Apple sued HTC for infringing on ten patents, nine of which involve technologies which apply to the iPhone, while one involves the use of gestures, but only in a specific use case. The suit has been filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware , alleging twenty instances of patent infringement. The company also petitioned the US ITC to block the import of twelve phones designed and manufactured by HTC. On Jul 15 2011 Apple won a preliminary patent ruling in an early judgment before the US ITC, in which HTC was found to have breached two of 10 patents held by Apple. On Aug 8 2011 ITC announced to have dediced to review Apple’s patent infringement complaint against HTC.
Oct 31 2010: In response to Motorola lawsuit against Apple, Apple sued Motorola and Motorola Mobility for Infringment on several Multi-Touch patents infringments in the Wisconsin Western District Court with two distinct lawsuits. A total of six patents are involved in the two lawsuits. On Nov 23, 2010: US International Trading Commission announced to review Apple patent case against Motorola.
Apr 18 2011: Apple filed suit against Samsung for copying the design of its iPad and iPhone with its smartphones and tablets. Aug 10 2011: European customs officers have been ordered to seize shipments of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab computers after the ruling late on Tuesday by a German patents court. In the last days Apple has been accused of presenting inaccurate evidence against Samsung. Aug 24 2011: Samsung has been banned from selling some galaxy phones in the Netherlands. The ban is set to begin on October 13, but Samsung doesn’t seem to be taking it too hard. |
On Jul 1 2011 the intellectual property of the Canada giant Nortel (in Bankrupt), involving 6,000 patents, was sold for $4.5 billion, in a dramatic auction, to a consortium formed by Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Sony, EMC and Ericsson. Google was the other competitor (and the big looser) for the deal. This event acted as a trigger for the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google.
On Aug 3 2011, In a post to the Official Google Blog, Google Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said that Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and others have waged “a hostile, organized campaign against Android” by snapping up patents from Novell and Nortel and asking Google for high licensing fees for every Android device”, accusing them of Patent Bulying.
Curiously, Apple is one of the main technological partners of Samsung for displays and semi-conductors. Samsung produces Apple’s A4 systems-on-a-chip (SoC) and also the two companies collaborate for iPad displays (Apple is moving from LG to Samsung because oof quality issues of the former). Nevertheless the lawsuits between the two companies are compromising their relationships so that Apple is evaluating a new supplier (TSMC) for its A6 nexy generation chipset. |
Oct 22 2009: Nokia sued Apple in Delaware court for infringing on ten patents related to GSM, UMTS, and WLAN standards that Nokia states they established after investing more than EUR 40 billion in R&D over the last 20 years. On Jun 14 2011 Apple agreed to pay between $300m and $600m to cover the 111m iPhones sold since its launch in 2007. Although the exact number was not specified, additional yearly fees could be part of the agreement.
On Jan 2010 Kodak sued Apple and RIM claiming Apple is infringing its 2001 patent covering technology that enables a camera to preview low-resolution versions of a moving image while recording still images at higher resolutions. The cases were filed in U.S. District Court in Rochester, N.Y., as well as the U.S. ITC. On Apr 2010 Apple argues that some Kodak still and video camera products violate two of its patents On Jul 2011: While Kodak’s claim is pending, the commission rules on Apple’s complaint and says Kodak’s digital-camera technology doesn’t violate Apple’s patents.
Oct 6 2010: Motorola sued Apple for patent infringement in three separate complaints; in district courts in Illinois and Florida and a separate complaint filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission. The suits covered 18 different patents, infiringed by Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and certain Mac computers. The Motorola patents include wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless e-mail, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization.
Jan 12 2011: Microsoft has motioned for a summary judgment to block Apple from trademarking the phrase “app store,” as it filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on July 17, 2008. Mar 30 2011: Microsoft filed a second objection to Apple’s enduring pursuit to trademark the phrase “app store hiring a linguist, Dr. Ronald Butters, to go head-to-head against Apple’s own hired linguist, Robert A. Leonard.
On Jul 1 2011 US ITC said Apple has violated two S3 Graphics Co. patents in its Mac OS X operating system, but not in the iOS platform. Although not directly related to Mobile, this ruling is meaningful since S3 has been acquired by HTC on Jul 6 2011 for $300 million in order to use their patents in the fight against Apple. HTC expects final ruling on Apple-S3 graphics case in November.
On Aug 16 2011 HTC filed a new lawsuit against Apple in Delaware’s US District Court, in an escalation of the legal battle between the two smartphone giants. HTC accused Apple to have infringed three of HTC’s patents through its sale of devices including iPads, iPods, iPhones and Macintosh computers. |
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Oct 1 2010: Microsoft sued Motorola for patent infringement relating to the company’s Android-based smartphones. Microsoft filed its complaint with the International Trade Commission and in a Washington state district court. At issue are nine patents that deal with, among others, sending and receiving e-mail, managing and syncing calendars and contacts, and managing a phone’s memory. Patent dispute will begin from Aug 21 2011, the hearing procedure can take up to 10 days, the judgment procedure is expected to reach the final verdict point only in March 2012.
Nov 9 2010: Microsoft sued again Motorola for charging excessive royalties on network technology used in Microsoft’s Xbox game system. |
 Feb 11 2011: a deal with the Devil, Microsoft and Nokia announce their plansto form a broad strategic partnership that would use their complementary strengths and expertise to create a new global mobile ecosystem.
Besides the alliances with Apple and RIM (see the corresponding cell), on May 12 2011 Microsoft has teamed up with HTC, Nokia and Sony Ericsson in Europe, filing a challenge seeking to invalidate Apple’s trademarks on the phrases “App Store” and “Appstore.” |
Nov 11 2010: Motorola Mobility sued Microsoft with the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Florida and the Western District of Wisconsin alleging infringement of sixteen patents by Microsoft’s PC and Server software, Windows mobile software and Xbox products. Motorola Mobility asked for the infringing devices to be barred from importation into the United States. On Dec 21 2010, ITC has agreed to hear the complaint.
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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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