Archive
1-15 January 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline
So here we are with the first Cyber Attacks Timeline for 2013 covering the first half of January.
Apparently the new year has begun with an intense activity by Cyber Crooks. Hacktivists and Cyber Criminals had many time to spend in front of their keyboards during the holiday break, and as a consequence the number of breaches with more than 10.000 accounts compromised is incredibly high. WWF China, the City of Steubenville, Ohio and The German Chamber of Commerce are only three examples of institutions that suffered massive breaches during the beginning of this year.
But the massive breaches are not the only remarkable events of this period: the waves of DDoS Attacks against US banks continued (and promise to extend also in the next weeks), Kaspersky Lab discovered a new massive Cyber Espionage Campaign dubbed “Red October”, and also the Japan Farm Ministry was hit by yet another Cyber Attack, allegedly originating from China…
If this is only the beginning… 2013 promises to be pretty much troubled for system administrators…
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts). To do so, you can use this form.
The Human Targeted Attack To Saudi Aramco
After nearly a month, the Cyber Attack to Saudi Aramco continues to attract the attentions of Infosec Professionals. If you still have doubts about the fact the human beings are the most dangerous forms of targeted attacks, you should read this article by Reuters: according to internal anonymous sources familiar with the company’s investigation (six firms with expertise in hacking attacks have been hired, bringing in dozens of outside experts to investigate the attack and repair computers), one or more insiders with high-level access are suspected of having assisted the hackers who damaged 30,000 computers at Saudi Arabia’s national oil company last month.
So, apparently, it looks like that Shamoon, in order to unleash its destructive rage, was assisted by an internal mole, “someone who had inside knowledge and inside privileges within the company” according to sources familiar with the company. An event which sounds a little strange, and apparently in contrast with the fact that some coding errors inside the malware seemed a priori to exclude a “state-sponsored” origin for the attack: it is really hard to think about an amateurish operation involving an internal saboteur.
So far, two different groups claimed the responsibility of the cyber attack: The Cutting Sword of Justice and Arab Youth Group, motivating the action with political reasons against what they call Al-Saud corrupt regime (sic). In any case, none of them mentioned an internal assistance for successfully carrying on the attack.
Meanwhile the saga continues, other Oil companies have been hit (Quatari RasGas) by the same malware, and Symantec, few days ago, has reported news of further attacks of W32.Disstrack (Symantec’s Name for the threat vector inside the Shamoon). I wonder if internal moles were involved also in those cases.
Related articles
- Saudi Aramco Admits 30K workstations affected (hackmageddon.com)
- The Cradle of Cyber War (hackmageddon.com)
Saudi Aramco Admits 30K workstations affected
Yesterday Saudi Aramco issued a public statement declaring to have fixed most damage and restored all its main internal network services affected by the Cyber Attack occurred on August 15, 2012 (or a “malicious virus” to quote the same term used by the company).
In the same statement, the company has unveiled the real entity of the attack, confirming what was reported in my original blog post: the malicious virus originated from external sources and affected about 30,000 workstations (on a total of 40,000).
The light at the end of the Cyber Tunnel seems quite close, since the company has stated that the workstations have been cleaned and restored to service. There are however some restrictions still in place: as a precaution, remote Internet access to online resources is still restricted and the website aramco.com is offline showing a courtesy page in which the company confirms that all the electronic systems are isolated from outside access.
You will probably remember that the attack occurred nearly in contemporary with the discovery of the latest malware in Middle East, Shamoon, tailored for targeting companies belonging to the Energy Sector, which had consequently put in close relationship with the cyber attack to Saudi Aramco. At the beginning, security researchers believed to have found a brand new cyber weapon in Middle East, but some coding errors found inside the malicious program have convinced the community that Shamoon is not the work of experienced cyber weapons programmers (anyway I believe that if Shamoon is really the source of the troubles for Saudi Aramco, 30,000 erased computers are a respectable results for a team of amateur programmers).
But if the situation is close to normal, hackers all over the world continue to threaten the company: a couple of days ago, an isolated group posted a new menace to Aramco, announcing a new attack for the 25th of August, at 21:00 GMT.Even if the website of aramco.com is still offline, this does not seem the effect of the latest alleged cyber attack: the hackers have posted today, Monday 29 August (sic), a new statement containing the result of their action (several password of internal router and a couple of accounts) but it appears lame and does not seem too much convincing.
Another Massive Cyber Attack in Middle East
Update August 17: More details about Shamoon, the malware targeting Saudi Aramco and other Middle East companies belonging to Energy Sector. Apparently the destructive details unveiled yesterday are confirmed.
Upate August 27: Saudi Aramco Admits 30K workstations affected.
I have just received a couple of tweets from an unknown user @cyberstrikenews providing more details about the latest Cyber Attack in Middle East targeting Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco).
@EduardKovacs @paulsparrows @Cyber_War_News First time more details about saudi aramco virus hack pastebin.com/p5C4mCCD
—
(@cyberstrikenews) August 16, 2012
The Oil Company declared that “production had not been affected” and even if the virus affected some computers, it did not penetrate key components of the network. The company also said it would return to normal operating mode soon.
From the information I have received (I cannot verify the integrity of the source, so I report the data integrally), the situation appears quite different:
- The company has about 40000 computer clients and about 2000 servers, the destructive virus was known to wipe all information and operation system related files in at least 30000 (75%) of them all data lost permanently.
- Among the servers which (were) destroyed are the company main web server, mail server (smtp and exchange), and the domain controller which as the central part of their network.
- All clients are permanently shut down and they will not be able to recover them in a short period.
- The main company web site ( http://www.aramco.com ) was down during 24 hours and at last they redirected it to an outside country web site called “www.saudiaramco.com”.
Apparently the web site has just been restored to normal operation redirecting the user to Saudi Aramco.
After Stuxnet, Duqu, Flame and Gauss, yet another confirm that there is no cyber peace in middle East!
References:
Middle East Cyber War Timeline (Part IV)
After some mutual attacks in terms of DDoS and defacements (with a new entry from Morocco and a resounding defacement against the Tel Aviv University Security Studies Program website, the head of the National Cyber Defense Authority), this week has seen the revamping of Credit Cards leaks “thanks” to Zcompany Hacker crew, who dumped more than 200 Credit Cards belonging to Israel And United States.
Even considering this latter event, however, the timeline seems to have confirmed the descending trend, with the early actors of both parties apparently quiet inside their virtual shelters (maybe to elaborate new strategies). But in this apparently calm sky a new thunderstorm threatens the horizon: it is the Anonymous which posted a message promising a reign of terror for Israel…
If you have a look to the Middle East nations involved in the cyber conflict which made attacks or suffered attacks (depicted in the map below that does not include U.S. victim of the latest Credit Card leak and France whose Council of Jewish Institutions was hacked earlier in June), you may easily notice that the virtual geopolitics reflect nearly exactly the real ones (the dotted arrow from Iran indicates the uncertainty of the nationality of OxOmar) with the new entry of Pakistani ZHC.
Middle East Cyberwar Timeline Part II
The #OpMegaupload and its subsequent Cyber Attacks all over the world, are diverging the attention from what is happening in the Middle East where the Cyber Conflict between Arab and Israeli Hackers is proceeding at an apparently unstoppable pace which forced me to post an update for the events occurred in the last week.
The rapid escalation of personal information leaks which characterized in the first two weeks of January has slightly changed shape, being replaced in the third week by Defacements and DDoS campaigns (targeting also the web sites of two Israeli Hospitals, as to say that a Cyber Geneva Convention is needed). Other dumps has also occurred, but not of the same scale as the first two weeks of January.
Besides the mutual DDoS and defacements to each other web sites, so far a quick calculation shows that since the beginning of this cyber war Arab Hackers have dumped more than 410,000 Credit Cards and 170,000 accounts, while the Israeli Counterparts have published approximately 11,000 Credit Cards, details of 140,000 individuals and 105,000 emails. Even if these data have to be taken with attention since many records have proven to be duplicated or fake, one consideration is clear: even Cyber Wars have their digital casualties.
The worst is yet to come?
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.
Mobile Warfare in Syria
Sources report that last week 150 people were killed during the protests against president Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Also in this circumstance, as already happened in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the world is witnessing to the protests thanks to the hundreds of citizen reporters equipped with their mobile devices and Internet connections.
The mobile warfare is acting in these countries too: as a matter of fact the tweets allow to follow the protests in real time, by mean of continuously up-to-date short messages, while Facebook allows the spread of the movements throughout the Nation (and not only): the blue social networks calls to join the revolution, by mean of continuously increasing groups, the largest of which The Syrian Revolution 2011, currently counts more than 90.000 supporters. In the same time, more and more videos shot by mobile devices are flooding YouTube.
In a certain sense it looks like the Middle East is playing a global Risk board game, whose troops are represented by mobile devices, whose effects on the social landscape effects on the social landscape have no geographical boundaries, especially for those governments that restrict the civil liberties of their citizens. This global Risk match is far from the end, since the invasion of the Mobile Warfare (and its effects for the governments) is also happening in Yemen and Bahrain, which are suffering similar outbreaks of protests. It is interesting to notice that all the peaks of the revolutions were spaced, in a time scale, by approximately one month:
- Tunisia, Jan 14th 2011: president Ben Ali ousted;
- Egypt, Feb 11th 2011: president Mubarak stepped down;
- Libya, March 19th 2011: after two weeks of fight Operation Odissey Dawn begins
If we perform a kind of extrapolation, does this mean that peaks of the protest in Syria and Jordan will reach the maximum at the half of April?
Speculation aside, as far as Syria is concerned, what is happening is following the same pattern advised in Maghreb area with the only difference that, so far, Syria did not decide to disrupt the internet connection in order to stop the stream of information towards foreign countries.
From a political and social perspective, all the involved countries have too many aspects in common: long-living governments (in Syria the al-Assad Dynasty governed continuously for 40 years, which become 42 in case of the monarchy of Bahrain), younger generations with no dream and trust on future, eager for more freedom. Most of all, younger generations which have access to internet connections and social networks (I was in Syria for work three years ago and can confirm that, even then, the penetration of internet, mobile technologies and social network was well established), through which they may observe, study (and compare), the (apparently) better conditions of their occidental peers.
I think the process is irreversible, and indeed is likely to increase (Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq will probably be suffering other outbreaks in the middle term). Meanwhile will be interesting to notice if the involved governments will apply preventive measures, on large scale, for instance the disruption of the Internet connections, or targeted specifically on mobile devices or preventing to reach the social networks for sharing tweets, groups or videos…
Related Articles
- Tweets Of Freedom (Updated) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- Mobile Warfare (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- The Thin Red Line (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- Mobile Warfare In Libya Comes True (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- Mobile Warfare in Syria (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
About The Author
Support My Work!
Share:
News
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.
Visitors from…
