Archive
Middle East Cyber War Timeline (Part 5)
Click here for the Middle East Cyber War Master Index with the Complete Timeline.
This week of Cyber War on the Middle East front, has shown a slight change on the Cyber Conflict trend. For the first time since January, psyops have deserved a primary role, maybe on the wake of the video released by the Anonymous against Israel one week ago. Not only the Jerusalem Post calls the video into question, but also argues that it may have been forged by Iran, identifying a state sponsored impersonation behind the entry of Anonymous in this cyber war.
But this has not been the only psyops event as an alleged message from Mossad to the Anonymous has appeared on pastebin, whose beginning sounds like a dark warning: If you want to be a hero start with saving your own lives. Although there are many doubts on its truthfulness, it deserves a particular attention since outlines a new age on psyops, what I call “pastebin psyops”.
But a war is not made only of psyops, so this week has also seen more hostile actions, among which the most remarkable one has been the leak of 300,000 accounts from Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing. This action had been preannounced by a wave of attacks on primary Israeli sites (which targeted also the PM site), and most of all, has been carried on by 0xOmar, the absolute initiator of this cyber conflict.
Palestine has been targeted as well, and it is really interesting to read under this perspective a statement by Ammar al-Ikir, the head of Paltel, the Palestinian telecommunications provider according to whom cyber attacks on Palestinian websites and internet servers have escalated since Palestine joined UNESCO.
On the Iranian front chronicle report of a failed cyber attacks againstPress TV, Iran’s English-language 24-hour news channel and most of all of a controversial statement by Gholam Reza Jalali, a senior Iranian military official in charge of head of the Iranian Cyber Intelligence, according to whom the country’s nuclear facilities have finally been made immune to cyber attacks. And it is not a coincidence that in this week Iran has kicked off the first national conference on Cyber Defense. A matter that deserves a special attention by Tehran because of the growing number of attacks on Iran’s cyber space by US and Israel. On the other hand, Israel did a similar move one month ago, at very early stage of the cyber conflict.
January 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part 2)
Click here for part 1.
The second half of January is gone, and it is undoubtely clear that this month has been characterized by hacktivism and will be remembered for the Mega Upload shutdown. Its direct and indirect aftermaths led to an unprecedented wave of cyber attacks in terms of LOIC-Based DDoS (with a brand new self service approach we will need to get used to), defacements and more hacking initiatives against several Governments and the EU Parliament, all perpetrated under the common umbrella of the opposition to SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. These attacks overshadowed another important Cyber Event: the Middle East Cyberwar (which for the sake of clarity deserved a dedicated series of posts, here Part I and Part II) and several other major breaches (above all Dreamhost and New York State Electric & Gas and Rochester Gas & Electric).
Chronicles also reports a cyber attack to railways, several cyber attacks to universities, a preferred target, and also of a bank robbery in South Africa which allowed the attackers to steal $6.7 million.
Do you think that cyber attacks in this month crossed the line and the Cyber Chessboard will not be the same anymore? It may be, meanwhile do not forget to follow @paulsparrows to get the latest timelines and feel free to support and improve my work with suggeastions and other meaningful events I eventually forgot to mention.
Middle East Cyber War Timeline
Feb 19 2012: Middle East Cyber War Timeline Master Index
I tried to summarize the chain of events that is characterizing the Cyber Escalation in the Middle East. I collected the information from several sources in order to provide a detailed picture of what is happening between Israel and the Arab Countries since the initial claim of 0xOmar. Observing the evolution of the chart, the Cyber conflicts seems to follow the same rules than real wars: innocent victims, propaganda and psyops, different paths of escalation and guerrilla tactics. This Cyber Conflict in Middle East is probably crossing the line: from now the landscape will not be the same anymore.
From the initial action of 0xOmar to the Israeli reaction, passing through the declaration of Cyber Jihad (the chart is updated to Sunday, the 22nd of January), (too) many events have happened, involving different hacking crews, different countries (also some French and Canadian web sites have been defaced) and different kind of attacks. What was started as an endless chain of massive leaks seems to be evolving as isolated actions typical of guerrilla.
Follow the line of a Cyber conflict that, similarly to the real one occurring in the Middle East, appears far from being solved…
January 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part 1)
Click here for part 2.
New year, new Cyber Attacks Timeline. Let us start our Information Security Travel in 2012 with the chart of the attacks occurred in the first fifteen days of January. This month has been characterized so far by the leak of Symantec Source Code and the strange story of alleged Cyber Espionage revolving around it. But this was not the only remarkable event: chronicles tell the endless Cyber-war between Israel and a Saudi Hacker (and more in general the Arab World), but also a revamped activity of the Anonymous against SOPA (with peak in Finland). The end of the month has also reserved several remarkable events (such as the breaches to T-Mobile and Zappos, the latter affecting potentially 24,000,000 of users). In general this has been a very active period. For 2012 this is only the beginning, and if a good beginning makes a good ending, there is little to be quiet…
Browse the chart and follows @paulsparrows to be updated on a biweekly basis. As usual after the jump you will find all the references. Feel free to report wrong/missing links or attacks.
November 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
The second half of November has confirmed the trend seen in the previous report covering the first half of the month. The period under examination has confirmed a remarkable increase in Cyber Attacks from both a quality and quantity perspective.
Although the month has been characterized by many small attacks, several remarkable events have really made the difference.
Among the victims of the month, Finland deserves a special mention in this unenviable rank: the second half of the month has confirmed the emerging trend for this country, which suffered in this period two further breaches of huge amounts of personal data, for a global cumulative cost, computed on the whole month, around $25 million.
But Finland was not the only northern European country hit by cybercrookers (maybe the term cyberprofessionals would be more appropriate): Norwegian systems associated with the country’s oil, gas and energy sectors were hit with an APT based cyber attack resulting in a loss of sensitive information including documents, drawings, user names and passwords.
But once again the crown of the most remarkable breach of the month is placed upon the head of South Korea which suffered another huge data dump affecting users of the popular MMORPG “Maple Story” affecting theoretically 13 million of users, nearly the 27% of the Korean population, for an estimated cost of the breach close to $2.8 billion.
The list of affected countries this month includes also 243,089 Nigerian users, victims of the hack of Naijaloaded, a popular forum.
Microsoft has been another victim in this November, with a phishing scam targeting Xbox Live users. Details of the scam are not clear, although each single affected user in U.K. might have lost something between £100 and £200 for a total cost of the breach assimilable to “million of Pounds”.
November will make history for showing for the first time to information security professionals the dangers hidden inside the SCADA universe (and not related to Nuclear Reactors). The echo of Stuxnet and Duqu is still alive, but this month was the the turn of SCADA water pumps, that have suffered a couple of attacks (Springfield and South Houston), the first one allegedly originated from Russia and the second one from a “lonely ranger” who considered the answer from DHS concerning the first incident, too soft and not enough satisfactory. My sixth sense (and one half) tells me that we will need to get more and more used to attacks against SCADA driven facilities.
The Anonymous continued their operations against governments with a brand new occurrence of their Friday Releases, targeting a Special Agent of the CA Department and leaking something like 38,000 emails. Besides from other some sparse “small” operations, the other remarkable action performed by the Anonymous collective involved the hacking of an United Nations (old?) server, that caused personal data of some personnel to be released on the Internet.
November Special mentions are dedicated (for opposite reasons) to HP and AT&T. HP for the issue on their printers discovered by a group of Researchers of Columbia Univerity, which could allow a malicious user to remotely control (and burn) them. AT&T deserved the special mention for the attack, unsuccessful, against the 1% of its 100 million wireless accounts customer base.
In any case, counting also the “minor” attacks of the month, the chart shows a real emergency for data protection issues: schools, e-commerce sites, TVs, government sites, etc. are increasingly becoming targets. Administrators do not show the deserved attention to data protection and maybe also the users are loosing the real perception of how much important is the safeguard of their personal information and how serious the aftermaths of a compromise are.
As usual, references for each single cyber attack are reported below. Have a (nice?) read and most of alle share among your acquaintances the awareness that everyone is virtually at risk.
Related articles
- November 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
A New Hack to Italian Police? A fake!
Here in Italy the news went almost unnoticed, but today Cyber War News reported about a new dump of data leaked from the Italian Police performed by an hacker called #Securis.
This is not the first time the Italian Police falls victim of an attack: in July the Italian Cyber Police (CNAIPIC) was targeted by a resounding attack which led to the alleged leak of 8 Gb of Data (yes because the whole dump was never released and the attack has many dark points so that someone thinks that it was a fake attack orchestrated by a competitor of one of the contractors currently working with the Police). Moreover, few days later a Police Contractor, Vitrociset, was defaced and the details of 100 users, including the Administrators, released on the Internet.
But as far as the last alleged attack is concerned, while looking at the dump file from the Cyber War News Article (and twitting with @DenisFrati about the strange fact that no police email addresses were included in the file but only personal email addresses), I recognized the accounts of several acquaintances among the leaked records. I immediately reminded that I had already seen the same accounts into another dump file, that is the pastebin containing the Vitrociset data, so I decided to have a look: only a coincidence? Not at all, since the Italian Police dump just released is exactly the old Vitrociset File that a cyber prankster decided to recycle. Have a look at the two files and draw your conclusion: except for the headers the two files are identical.
I wonder why in Italy everything is ridiculous in this period, and hacking is not an expection to this rule.
October 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
October has come and here it is, also for this month, the first part of my Cyber Attacks Timeline covering the cyber events occurred in the first half of the current month.
Three events in particular have marked this month: The German Trojan R2-D2 (that is raising many questions and concerns inside the infosec community), the keylogger hitting U.S. Drones and a new cyber attack to Sony involving this time “only” 93,000 accounts (oops! They did it again).
Except for a couple of isolated occurrences (in Austria and UK), the Cyber Attacks by Anonymous and Antisec had a break, maybe because hacktivism efforts are being focused on the #OccupyWallStreet operation that is rapidly spreading all over the World (I wonder why in here in Rome yesterday it has not been possible to have peaceful protests as happened in all the other Capitals). Besides, albeit not directly related with Anonymous, several Syrian log files were leaked showing the control of the Government on the Internet.
Other events of the month: a couple of fashion related websites were hacked, the Cyber-Guerrilla between India and Pakistan was particularly active with the cyber armies of the two nations facing themselves in the cyber space with continual mutual defacements, @SwichSmoke was also particularly active against Venezuela Government Web Sites. Other “minor” leaks were performed by @FailRoot and @ThEhAcKeR12 but one of the victims of the latter was Camber Corporation, an U.S. Contractor.
Anyway, Camber Corporation was not the only targeted Contractor, also Raytheon Corporation (a survivor of the RSA Breach) was targeted with a cloud based spear-phishing campaign, again the attack was thwarted but, in my opinion, has deserved a mention as well. Chronicles also reports of a claimed hack to Infragard (again).
Moreover the aftermaths of the RSA breach are not completely over: this month the security firm’s CEO claimed that a couple of different Cyber Crews, under the flag of an enemy nation (and the suspects were immediately directed to China), are behind the Cyber Attack in March and acted to perform it.
But a very special mention for this month (and the consequent lowly desiderable prize), is undoubtedly deserved by Mr. Oliver Letwin, Her Majesty’s Cabinet Minister, who was caught by The Daily Mirror in the habit of dumping private correspondence and sensitive documents detailing Al-Qaeda activities and secret service operations into park bins in St James’s Park, Westminster, close to Downing Street. Security, logical and physical, may have many unpredictable implications…
From a technical point of view SQLi and defacements were the most used lethal weapons for this month, even if a massive ASP.NET based attack, targeting 300,000 web sites, is also worth mentioning.
This Timeline was compiled with Useful Resources by:
- Cyber War News
- DATALOSSdb
- Naked Security
- Office Of Inadequate Security (DataBreaches.net)
- Softpedia
- The Hacker News
- Threatpost
And my inclusion criteria do not take into consideration simple defacement attacks (unless they are particularly resounding) or small data leaks.
Last but not least: you may find all the timelines for 2011 in my Master Index. Enjoy the list(s) and share and retweet to encourage me to keep it up2date!
| Date | Author | Description | Organization | Attack |
| Oct 1 |  |
NeatStuffs hacks filmradar.com a movie review and information site/community and releases on Mediafire a 6mb txt file containing 95167 accounts with hashed passwords. Estimated cost of the breach is $ 20,365,738. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Oct 2 |  |
Venezuela National Statistics Institute
SwichSmoke crew hacks the Venezuela National Statistics Insitute during the 2011 Census. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Oct 2 |
 |
Camber Corporation (US Contractor)
Once again a US Government contractor is target of cyber crime. This time is the turn of Camber Corporation, targeted by a small hack by @ThEhAcKeR12, which releases 3 admin accounts with encrypted passwords. and admin full name. |
 |
? |
| Oct 2 |
|
wrestlegame.co.uk
Again @ThEhAcKeR12, this time the crew dumps 1500+ accounts (in encrypted format) and a database from wrestlegame.co.uk. Estimated cost of the breach is around $321,000. |
wrestlegame | SQLi? |
| Oct 2 |
A student arrested few days later |
Thailand Prime Minister
Thailand’s Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, had her Twitter account hacked flooding her followers with a stream of messages criticising her leadership with statements like this: The final post read: “If she can’t even protect her own Twitter account, how can she protect the country?“ |
 |
Account Hacking |
| Oct 4 |  |
Austrian Economy Chamber (WKO) WKO confirms that its webserver was infiltrated by unidentified cyber criminals. More than 6,000 data sets of customers of the chamber were published on the internet. Although Anonymous Austria leaked the data, they stressed they had not carried out the attack on WKO themselves, but had been provided with the records by someone else, adding that the security leak was exposed by using online search engine Google. Estimated cost of the Breach is around $1,284,000. |
 |
Vulnerability on The Target Platform |
| Oct 5 | |
@ThEhAcKeR12 does not stop here and dumps 3300 accounts from funniestvideosonline.com and are all encrypted passwords. Estimated cost of the Breach is around $706,200. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Oct 5 |  |
www.xvidonline.com @FailRoot hacks and leaks several accounts from www.xvidonline.com putting the websits offline. |
xvidonline.com | SQLi? |
| Oct 5 | Optik Fiber | Gmail (Claimed) Optik Fiber releases several gmail accounts claimed to have been hacked via a known security flaw in gmail. It is not sure if this is real or not but it is meaningful as well of the global level of (in)security, real or psychological. |
 |
Known Security Flaw in Gmail (N/A) |
| Oct 5 | ? | Fashion TV India Unknown hackers hacks Fashion TV India with the injection tool havij and obtain a list of accounts dumping usernames and passwords in clear text. |
 |
SQLi via havij |
| Oct 6 |  |
Syrian Internet Log Files
Internet activists from Telecomix release 54 GB of log files allegedly created by Syrian internet censors between 22 July and 5 August 2011. The data were found on a third party server. |
 |
? |
| Oct 7 |
|
An Australian University website that lists jobs is hacked by @BlackHatGhosts and has data dumped, included user logins and passwords. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Oct 7 | Several Hackers |
Department of Public Enterprises South Africa Department of Public Enterprises, south Africa is hacked and had its database dumped |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 7 | Same authors above |
Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Republic of Indonesia Another day, another government website hacked, (and its data leaked). |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 7 | ? | University Of Georgia The University of Georgia discovers a data file on a publicly available Web server that contained sensitive personnel information on 18,931 members of the faculty and staff employed at the institution in 2002. The file included the social security number, name, date of birth, date of employment, sex, race, home phone number and home address of individuals employed at UGA in 2002. Estimatec Cost of the Breach is around $4,051,234. |
 |
Internal Accidental Error |
| Oct 8 | ? |
U.S. Military Drones
Wired reports that a computer virus has infected Predator drones and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ keystroke during their fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones. The virus was detected nearly two weeks ago at the Ground Control System (GCS) at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and has not prevented drones from flying their missions, showing an unexpected strength so that multiple efforts were necessary to remove it from Creech’s computers. |
 |
USB Stick? |
| Oct 8 | German law Author. and Customs Dep. |
German Citizens A very strange (un)lawful Cyber Attack, against German Citizens. Chaos Computer Club discloses a “state malware”: a backdoor Trojan horse capable of spying on online activity and recording Skype internet calls. They declare the malware is used by the German police force. The malware was allegedly installed onto the computer as it passed through customs control at Munich Airport. |
 |
Troian Horse |
| Oct 9 | Turkish Energy Team |
Several Government Websites
Turkish Energy Team performs (and keeps on to perform) a massive defacement against several governments websites (in certain cases some sub domains). The list (in continuous growth) is published on Zone-H. |
 |
Defacement |
| Oct 9 | MCA-CRB |
Other Government Websites
Different Crew, same result: a massive defacement against several governments websites. Also in this case the list (in continuous growth) is published on Zone-H. |
 |
Defacement |
| Oct 9 | |
justonehost.com
Another Web site hosting company defaced: this time it is the turn of justonehost.com that is hacked by @FailRoot, that also dumps its Database online. The leak contains all users informations, emails, paypals and much more is 11.86mb and has been uploaded to megaupload. |
 |
Defacement SQLi |
| Oct 10 |
|
Congress of the State of Chihuahua Another government website hit and leaked by @FailRoot: Congress of the state of Chihuahua Mexico. The leak contains administration usernames and (easy guessable) passwords. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Oct 10 | Q!sR QaTaR |
A cybercriminal from Quatar defaces a large number of websites belonging to the Ankara government, leaving them non-operational. |
 |
Margent |
| Oct 10 |
 |
40 Zimbabwe Government Websites
A crew called ISCN hacks and defaces 40 Zimbabwe government based websites leaving a polical message. |
 |
Defacement |
| Oct 10 |  |
UKGraffiti.com
UKGraffiti is hacked by Anonymous_DR (Anonymous Dominicana) who also dumps usernames, emails and encrypted passwords. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Oct 11 | ? |
RSA
RSA reveals that it believes two groups, working on behalf of a single nation state, hacked into its servers during the infamous Breach of March and stole information related to the company’s SecurID two-factor authentication products used to attack some defense contractors. Although people are likely to assume that China might have been involved in the attack, they did not reveal the name of the nation involved. |
 |
APT |
| Oct 11 | ? |
Sony (Playstation Network, Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment) Back tho the future! Sony under cyber attack… Again! The Company reports of unauthorized attempts to verify valid user accounts on Playstation Network, Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment. A total of 93,000 accounts have been affected (PSN/SEN: approximately 60,000 accounts; SOE: approximately 33,000). In these cases the attempts succeeded in verifying valid sign-in IDs and passwords, so the accounts were temporalily locked. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Oct 11 | ? |
blueHOMES.com Unknown Hackers hack the European property Dealers website blueHOMES.com . About 500,000 Users data claim to be hacked including database with customer passwords in plaintext, full addresses, skype account, and mailboxes of bluehomes. Specified data leaked on pastebin with sample data of some users. |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 11 | ? |
Find2Trade.com
Another website hit by Havij. This time is the turn of Find2Trade, an internet portal whose goal is to help small and medium enterprises to reach much higher profits while reducing costs. UserID, email and passwords, which are encrypted, were leaked. |
 |
Havij |
| Oct 12 | ? |
Raytheon
The U.S. Defense Contractor reveals that it was the victim of a cloud-based attack for the first time, with the incident occurring one week before. Nothing new but the fact that this was the first cloud based attack. The firm usually blocks 1.2 billion attacks a day in addition to four million spam emails each day. |
 |
N/A |
| Oct 12 | ? | WineHQ
Another Linux Project hacked! Jeremy White, Codeweavers Founder announces that access to the WineHQ database has been compromised. It looks like attackers have used phpMyAdmin to access the WineHQ project’s database and harvest users’ appdb and bugzilla access credentials. |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 13 | ? |
300,000 Websites Google reveals another mass infection which affected hundreds of thousands of sites that relied on ASP or ASP.NET: A malicious script got injected into several locations targeting English, German, French and other language speakers surfers. |
 |
ASP Vulnerability |
| Oct 13 | ? |
Genentech The biotechnology company suffered a data breach on August, 17 which may have resulted in the theft of information belonging to 3,500 of the million patients who utilize the company’s support programs. Estimated Cost of The Breach is around $750,000 |
 |
Unlegitimate Access |
| Oct 14 | ? |
Chili’s Grill & Bar Restaurant
Ok a Chili Breach is not a big deal, except the fact that the computer server Hackers broke into, is placed at Yokosuka Naval Base. According to Navy officials, hackers stole credit card information and run up erroneous charges. |
 |
Credit Card Thieft |
| Oct 14 | ? |
Fedora Project This is not a direct cyber attack but a consequence of the hacks to Linux projects (Kernel.org and Linux). ThreatPost reveals that Fedora Project contacted users to change their password and SSH public key before November 30 to avoid having their accounts marked as inactive. |
 |
N/A |
| Oct 14 | |
Barinas State, Venezuela Another dump of sites from @SwichSmoke coming from the state “Barinas” and the government for that state. The release note, in Spanish states that the original password is 123456, fairly lame for a government website. |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 14 | Vicky Singh |
Pakistan Embassy in China Another episode of the Cyberware between Pakistan and Indian Crew: Vicky Singh defaces the Pakistan Embassy in China. |
 |
? |
| Oct 14 | Team Dexter |
Contrexx.com
An European Content Management System provider is hacked and has a dump of administration details leaked online. |
 |
N/A |
| Oct 14 Oct 15 | Several Authors |
Club Music CPPS
Club Music CPPS is hacked: the leak contains account emails, usernames and decrypted passwords. Note: on Oct 16 the site is still defaced |
 |
SQLi Defacement |
| Oct 14 | |
Venezuela National Graduate Advisory Council
Another cyber attack by @SwichSmoke, this time they leak the Venezuela National Graduate Advisory Council and release the leaked data on pastebin. |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 14 | ? |
Infragard Atlanta (claimed)
It seems that Infragrad has been hacked again and had a dump of accounts leaked and decrypted even if there is no source or reason or even proof that this is 100% real in anyway. Anyway it still shows that Infragard is still in the eyes of some people. The alleged leak contains emails, usernames, encrypted passwords and the decryption of the password as well. |
 |
N/A |
| Oct 14 | ? |
NSEC (Netaji Subhash Engineering College)
The Netaji Subhash Engineering College NSEC is hacked and has a fair amount of member accounts dumped on pastebin. This comes from an unknown source and unknown reasons. The leak contains full user information, emails and passwords in clear text. |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 14 |  |
Barbaros-DZ hacks over 1,700 sites belonging to the Chinese Government defacing them and leaving a message against the Goverment itself. THe list of the sites is available on Zone-H. |
 |
Defacement |
| Oct 14 |  |
Special mention this month for Her Mayesty’s Cabinet Minister Oliver Letwin, who has got himself into hot water, after The Daily Mirror reported him in the habit of dumping private correspondence and sensitive documents detailing Al-Qaeda activities and secret service operations into park bins in St James’s Park, Westminster, close to Downing Street. The documents contained the personal details of the minister’s constituents, including names, phone numbers, email contacts and postal addresses. |
 |
Defacement |
| Oct 15 | SA3D HaCk3D |
16,000+ websites
SA3D HaCk3D shows on Zone-H the results of his work of the past years: a total of 16,000+ websites defaced. |
 |
Defacement |
| Oct 15 | p0xy |
iCPPS
For an alleged personal revenge, a hacker called p0xy leaks usernames, emails and hashed passwords from the iCPPS online platform. |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 15 | iolaka |
World Miss Photogenic
This time is the turn of a fashion/model based website, which is attacked and suffers a dump of accounts leaked containing 1000+ accounts including usernames, emails and encrypted passwords by iolaka. |
 |
SQLi |
| Oct 15 |  |
India Cyber Crime Investigation Cell Another episode of the Cyber-Guerrilla between India and Pakistan: Pakistani hacker Shadow008 hacks and defaces India’s Most Important website of Cyber cell located at Mumbai. |
 |
Defacement |
Related articles
- Just For Reference… (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- September 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- September 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
September 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
Here it is the second part of my traditional monthly Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I available here). From an information Security Perspective the main events of this month were the infamous Diginotar breach which led to Bankrupt for the Dutch Company and also the BEAST attack to SSL, two events which, together, thumbed the Infosec Community in its stomach.
Of course these events did not divert the attention of hackers who kept on to carry on attacks against different targets.
The Anonymous continued their campaign: although mainly focused on the #OccupyWallStreet Operation (in which a Senior Officer who used pepper spray against protestors was “doxed”, they targeted several governments including Mexico, Austria, (where they also performed an unconfirmed hack against an health insurance Firm targeting 600,000 dumped users) and Syria. In particular the latter attack triggered a retaliation by Syrian Electronic Soldiers against the prestigious Harvard University.
Chronicles also report a Japan defense contractor hit by hackers, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, (China denied its involvement on the attack), another Twitter Account hacked by The Script Kiddies (this time against USA Today), an indirect attack perpetrated against (through) Oracle by infecting its MySQL.com domain with downloadable malware and, last but not least a massive defacement of 700,000 sites hosted by Inmotion.
US Navy was also victim of defacement.
As far as the prize for the “Most Expensive Breach of the Month” is concerned, the laurel wreath is undoubtedly for SAIC (Science Applications International Corp.) which lost a tape database backup containing data of 4,900.000 users with an estimated cost of approximately 1 billion of bucks…
As usual, useful Resources for compiling the table include:
- Cyber War News (but it looks like it gave up to post reports on Cyber Attacks on 25 September 2011)
CNET Hackers Chart(unfortunately it is not up-to-date since 24 August 2011).- DATALOSSdb
- Dark Reading
- Naked Security
- Office Of Inadequate Security (DataBreaches.net)
- The Hacker News
My inclusion criteria do not take into consideration simple defacement attacks (unless they are particularly resounding) or small data leaks.
Update: On 09/30/2011, Betfair reported a 3.15 million records breach with a total estimated cost of 1.3 billion USD winning the laurel wreath of the most expensive breach of the month.
| Date | Author | Description | Organization | Attack |
| Sep 16 |
|
Websites of several Mexican government ministries As part of OpIndipendencia, websites of several Mexican government ministries, including Defense and Public Security, are teared down in the same day of the symbolic beginning of Mexico’s independence from Spain. |
 |
DDoS |
| Sep 16 | Mikster |
Clubmusic.com
Clubmusic.com, a worldwide dj website. is hacked and the leak dumped on pastebin. |
 |
SQLi |
| Sep 16 | Sec Indi Security Team |
Official Website of The United States Navy An hacker crew called Sec Indi Security Team Hacker uploads a custom message on the server to warn a WebDav vulnerability. |
 |
WebDav Vulnerabilty |
| Sep 16 | ? | California State Assembly More than 50 employees of the California State Assemby, including some lawmakers, have been warned that their personal information might have been obtained by a computer hacker. |
 |
? |
| Sep 17 | ? |
Intelligence And National Security Alliance Names and email addresses of hundreds of U.S. intelligence officials have been posted on an anti-secrecy website. On Monday Sep 10 INSA published a major report warning of an urgent need for cyberdefenses. Within a couple of days, in apparent retaliation, INSA’s “secure” computer system was hacked and the entire 3,000-person membership posted on the Cryptome.org website |
 |
N/A |
| Sep 17 | ? |
Fake FBI Anonymous Report A Fake FBI Psychological profile of the Anonymous group is published. Although not a direct cyber attack, this event can be considered an example of psychological hacking and a “sign of the times” of how information and counter information may play a crucial role in hacking. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Sep 18 |  |
Texas Police Anonymous/Anti-sec releases a document containing a list of about 3300 members of the Texas Police Association |
 |
N/A |
| Sep 19 |
? |
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan’s biggest defense contractor, has revealed that it suffered a hacker attack in August that caused some of its networks to be infected by malware. According to the firm, 45 network servers and 38 PCs became infected with malware at ten facilities across Japan. The infected sites included its submarine manufacturing plant in Kobe and the Nagoya Guidance & Propulsion System Works, which makes engine parts for missiles. |
 |
APT |
| Sep 19 |  |
City Of Rennes TeaMp0isoN takes responsibly to hack the official website of The City Of Rennes (France) via a tweet. They also publish the reason of hack on the defacement page. |
 |
Defacement |
| Sep 19 |
? |
Hana SK Card Co., a South Korean credit card firm, announces that Sep 17, some 200 of its customers’ personal information has been leaked. Total cost of the breach is $42,800. |
Hana SK Card |
SQLi? |
| Sep 20 |
? | Former USSR Region Source report that at least 50 victim organizations ranging from government ministries and agencies, diplomatic missions, research institutions, and commercial entities have been hit in the former Soviet Union region and other countries in an apparent industrial espionage campaign that has been going on at least since August 2010.The advanced persistent threat (APT)-type attacks — dubbed “Lurid” after the Trojan malware family being used in it — has infected some 1,465 computers in 61 countries with more than 300 targeted attacks. |
 |
APT |
| Sep 20 |
Shad0w | Fox Sports Website Fox Sports website, on of the most visited Websites in the world (rank 590 in Alexa) gets hacked. An Hacker named “Shad0w” releases SQL injection Vulnerability on one of the sub domain of Fox Sports and exploit it to extract the database. Leaked database info posted on pastebin. Vulnerable link is also posted together admin password hashes. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Sep 22 |  |
Core Security Technologies Another security Firm target of hacking: Core Security Technologies is hacked by an hacker called Snc0pe, who defaces some websites belonging to the firm. Mirror of the hack can be seen here. |
 |
N/A |
| Sep 24 | ? |
UKChatterbox
Popular IRC service UKChatterbox advises users to change their passwords following a series of hacks which culminated in an attack that may have compromised user details. The password reset follows on from a succession of outages previously attributed to maintenance upgrades, back to the start of the summer. In a notice to users, UKChatterbox advises users to change their passwords and not to re-use them on other sites. The number of hacked account is unknown. |
 |
N/A |
| Sep 25 |
|
Seven Major Syrian Cities and Government Web Sites The Anonymous unleash a chain of defacement actions against the Syrian Government, hacking and defacing the official sites of seven major Syrian cities, which stayed up in their defaced version for more than 16 hours. The defacement actions kept on the following day in which 11 Syrian Government Sites were defaced as part of the same operation. |
|
Defacement |
| Sep 25 | ? |
Indira Gandhi International Airport
Although happened three months ago, it turns out that a ‘technical snag’ hittinh operations at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) T3 Terminal was caused by a “malicious code” sent from a remote location to breach the security at the airport. |
 |
APT |
| Sep 26 |  |
Inmotion Hosting Server 700,000 websites hosted on InMotion Hosting network are hacked by TiGER-M@TE. The hackers copied over the index.php in many directories (public_html, wp-admin), deleted images directory and added index.php files where not needed. List of all hacked 700,000 sites here. |
 |
Defacement |
| Sep 26 | |
Austrian Police The Austrian Anonymous branch publishes the names and addresses of nearly 25,000 police officials, raising fears for officers’ personal security. An Austrian Interior ministry spokesman said the information came from an “association closely related with the police”. Estimated cost of the breach is around $ 5,400,000. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Sep 26 |  |
USA Today Twitter Account
The USA Today Twitter account is hacked and starts to tweet false messages mentioning the other accounts hacked by the authors of the action: the Script Kiddies (already in the spotlight for hacking the FoxNews Twitter Account at the Eve of 9/11 anniversary) |
 |
Account Hacking |
| Sep 26 |
? |
MySQL.com
MySQL.com website is struck by cybercriminals, who hacked their way in to serve up malicious code to visiting computers with a Java exploit that downloaded and executed malicious code on visiting Windows computers. Brian Krebs reports that just few days before, he noticed on a Russian underground website that a hacker was offering to sell admin rights to MySQL.com for $3000. MySQL.com receives almost 12 million visitors a month (nearly 400,000 a day). |
 |
Java Exploit to install malware |
| Sep 26 |  |
Harvard University In retaliation for the defacements performed by the Anonymous targeting Syria, Syrian Electronic Soldiers deface the website of the prestigious Harvard University. The same group came in the spotlight during July and August for defacing Anonoplus engaging a “de facto” cyberwar against The Anonymous. |
 |
Defacement |
| Sep 26 | ? |
#Occupywallstreet The month of September is characterized by the OccupyWallStreet Operation, started on September, the 17th and still ongoing. Although not directly configurable as an hacking action, it may rely on the support of the Anonymous who “doxed” a senior police who controversially usec pepper spray against a group of female protesters. |
 |
N/A |
| Sep 27 | |
COGEL, Council On Governmental Ethical Law Once again in this month,Snc0pe claims another resounding action. This time the alleged target is the official website of The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL). He posts a message on pastebin, along with the database download link. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Sep 28 | |
Tiroler Gebietskrankenkasse (TGKK) AnonAustria in the spotlight again after the resounding hack against Austrian Police. This time the victim is an health insurance firm Tiroler Gebietskrankenkasse (TGKK) whose database of some 600,475 medical records AnonAustria claims to have hacked. The databse includes some celebrities. The total cost of the breach is around $128,500,000.00. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Sep 29 | ? |
SAIC (Science Applications International Corp.) SAIC, one of the Pentagon‘s largest contractors reveals to have discovered a data breach occurred a couple of weeks before, affecting as many as 4.9 million patients who have received care from military facilities in San Antonio since 1992. The breach involved backup computer tapes from an electronic health care record. Some of the information included Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and private health information for patients in 10 states. Statement of the data breach here Estimated cost of the breach is around $ 1 billion. |
 |
Car Burglary |
| Sep 30 | ? |
Laptop Virus Repair
Although not resounding as the one which targeted MySQL.com, here it is another example of a website infected with malicious code targeting a free antivirus cloud based service. |
Laptop Virus Repair |
Malicious Code |
| Sep 30 | ? |
Betfair
Betfair reports a leak including not only the payment card details of most of its customers but also “3.15m account usernames with encrypted security questions”, “2.9m usernames with one or more addresses” and “89,744 account usernames with bank account details”. The incident occurred on 14 March 2011 but was announced only 18 months later. Estimated cost of the breach is around $1.3 billion. |
 |
? |
September 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
So here it is, also for this month, the first part of My Cyber Attacks Timeline covering the first half of September.
Apparently It looks like the wave of the Anonymous attacks that characterized August has stopped. Even if several isolated episodes occurred, their impact was slightly lower than the previous months.
Probably the most important security incident for this month was the Diginotar Hack, not only because the Dutch Certification Authority has been banned forever by the main browsers and OSes but also because all the authentication model based on CAs is under discussion. Moreover once again a cyber attack has been used as a mean of repression. This incident is a turnkey point for information security but in my opinion also the DNS hacks by Anonymous Sri Lanka and Turkguvenligi are noticeable since they reinforce the need for a quick adoption of DNSSEC.
For the first time not even the Linux Operating System (an open world) was immune from hackers: both the Linux Kernel and the Linux Foundation Web Sites were hacked during this month, two episodes that Penguin Lovers will remember for a long time.
Easily predictable an attack recalling 9/11 carried on against the Twitter Account of NBC News was also reported.
Other noticeable events: three huge data breaches were reported, four attacks with political motivations targeting India, Nigeria, Colombia, and the Russia Embassy in London were perpetrated and another security vendor (Panda Security) was indirectly targeted.
The remainder of the month was characterized by many smaller attacks (mostly defacements and data leaks) and an actress (Scarlett Johansson) was also victim of data leaks.
Useful Resources for compiling the table include:
- Cyber War News
- CNET Hackers Chart
- DATALOSSdb
- Naked Security
- Office Of Inadequate Security (DataBreaches.net)
- The Hacker News
And my inclusion criteria do not take into consideration simple defacement attacks (unless they are particularly resounding) or small data leaks.
| Date | Author | Description | Organization | Attack |
| Sep 1 |
? |
The site of Kernel.org suffered a security breach leading which caused the server to be rooted and 448 credential compromised. Although it is believed that the initial infection started on August the 12th, it was not detected for another 12 days. |
 |
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. |
 |
? |
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. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Aug 2 | |
Vitrociset
72 hours after the first defacement, Vitrociset, a contractor of Italian Cyber Police, is hacked and defaced again by Anonymous. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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 |
 |
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 |
 |
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 |
 |
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 |
 |
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. |
 |
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”. |
 |
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 |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Aug 20 |  |
A turkish based hacker hacks and defaces the Korean branch of HSBC, the global banking group. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
SQLi? |
| Aug 28 |  |
Orange.fr
Anonymous Hacker hacks Orange.fr and uploads the database and Site source code backup on file sharing site. |
 |
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. |
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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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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.” |
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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? |
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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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