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July 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics
Here we are with the statistics from the Cyber Attack Timelines for the first and the second half of July 2012. The sample included 76 attacks which have been analyzed according the three familiar parameters: Motivations behind attacks, Distribution of attacks techniques and Distribution of targets.
Again, I will never get tired of repeating that data must be taken very carefully since they do refer only to discovered attacks (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence do not pretend to be exhaustive but only aim to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape” of the considered period. Moreover, remember that the most dangerous threats are the invisible ones.
As far as the Motivations Behind Attacks are concerned, July has confirmed the predominance of Cyber Crime, although it dropped down to 55% from 72% of the previous month. It is interesting to notice the corresponding growth of Hacktivism, from 18% in June to 32% in July. Although the number of (discovered) attacks motivated by Cyber Espionage is always low, this month their occurrences nearly doubled as a consequence of the events in the Middle East, that confirms to be a “hot area” for the Cyber Arena. Cyber Warfare is positioned at the bottom of the chart with a “poor” 4% of the occurrences.
The Distribution Of Attacks Techniques chart confirms that is getting harder and harder to recognize what the cyber crooks have leveraged to reach their goal. The percentage of the unknown attacks has grown from the 36% of June to the 45% of July. In any case, among the recognized attacks, SQL Injection ranks at number one with the 28% of possible occurrences. DDoS has confirmed his decreasing trend from 16% in June to 9% in July. Maybe the possible victims are learning to effectively defend themselves?
The Distribution of Targets chart confirms that targets belonging to industry are always on top of the preferences of Cyber Crooks with the 32% of occurrences, well above the 21% of the last month. Government targets confirmed their second place with the 15% of occurrences (were the 18% on July) followed by Online Services with the 10%. It is interesting to notice the low occurrences of incidents targeting Law Enforcement Agencies and Military Institutions. Maybe after the high number of cyber attacks suffered, they are learning to enforce adequate countermeasures.
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).
July 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
Click here for Part I.
The Dog Days are nearly here. Weather forecast are announcing for Italy one of the hottest summers since 2003, and the same can be said for the Infosec temperature, although, July 2012 has been very different from the same month of 2011, which was deeply characterized by hacktvism.
Instead looks like that hacktivists have partially left the scene in favor of cyber criminals who executed several high profile breaches also in the second part of the month: Maplesoft, Gamigo, KT Corporation and Dropbox are the most remarkable victims of cyber-attacks, but also other important firms, even if with different scales, have been hit by (improvised) Cyber Criminals. One example for all? Nike who suffered a loss of $80,000 by a 25-year improvised hacker, who decided that exploiting a web vulnerability was the best way to acquire professional merchandise.
But probably the prize for the most “peculiar” cyber-criminal is completely deserved by Catherine Venusto, who successfully changed her sons’ grade for 110 times between 2011 and 2012.
As far as the Hacktivism is concerned, although we were not in the same condition of one year ago (a leak every day kept security away), this month has offered the massive leak of the Australian Provider AAPT, with 40 gb of data allegedly stolen by the Anonymous.
Last but not least, a special mention for the cyber espionage campaigns, that had an unprecedented growth in this month: Israel, Iran, Japan, the European Union and Canada, are only few of the victims. Iran gained also an unwelcome record, the first nation to be hit by a malware capable of blasting PC speakers with an AC/DC song…
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).
July 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (Part I)
Here we are with the statistics from the Cyber Attack Timeline for the first half of July 2012. The sample included 39 attacks which have been analyzed according the three familiar parameters: Motivations behind attacks, Distribution of attacks techniques and Distribution of targets.
As far as Motivations Behind Attacks are concerned, the first two weeks of July confirmed the trend of the last months: Cybercrime ranked at number one with nearly the 70% of the occurrences, well ahead hacktivism, at number two with the 23%. Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage are well behind with respectively the 5% and 3% of the attacks.
The Distribution Of Attack Techniques has shown, for the first half of July, a considerable number of attacks of unknown origin. As a matter of fact, in more than one half of the occurrences (53%) it has not been possible to track the attack technique used by cyber croockers, at least according to the available information. In all those cases in which it has been possible to track the attacks, the first half of July has seen an overtake of DDoS (18%) against SQL Injection (13%), although if one sums the total occurrences of SQL Injections (certain and claimed, the latter are characterized by a question mark in the chart), the total of SQLi is a remarkable 21%, slightly greater than DDoS). I had to modify this chart after I came across an article indicating an SQL Injection attack as the vector of the breach suffered by Nvidia.
The Distribution of Targets chart confirms the Industry at rank number one with the 38% of occurrences. In any case, if we do not consider the fragmentation of this category (I have dedicated an apposite chart to drill it down), Governments have confirmed to be the most vulnerable targets with the 10% of the occurrences, corresponding to the most vulnerable single category.
Amongst the single categories, Law Enforcement Agencies rank at number two with the 8% of occurrences, followed by Education targets, online forums and political organizations, each one of them with the 5% of occurrences.
Again, please notice that data must be taken very carefully since they do refer only to discovered attacks (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence do not pretend to be exhaustive but only aim to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape” of the considered period. Moreover, remember that the most dangerous threats are the invisible ones.
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).
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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