Archive
June 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
Part I (1-15 June) at this link
From an information security perspective, the second half of June has been characterized by the hacking collective UGNAZI (and its members) and also by an individual hacker: .c0mrade AKA @OfficialComrade.
Both entities have left behind them a long trail of Cyber Attacks against different targets (in several cases the real extent of the attack is uncertain) and with different techniques, although it is likely that the UGNAZI collective will be forced to change the plans after the arrest of the group’s leader, JoshTheGod, nearly at the end of the month (27thof June), effectively they have considerably reduced the rate of their cyber attacks in the second part of the analyzed period.
On the other hand, hospitals, banks, several major airlines are only few examples of the preys fallen under the attacks carried on by .c0mrade. Plese notce that from Cyber Crime perspective, is also interesting to notice the High Roller Operation, a giant fraud against the banking industry, unmasked by McAfee.
Needless to say, the Cyber War front is always hot, most of all in Middle East, were several DDoS attacks targeted some Israeli institutions and, most of all, an alleged unspecified massive Cyber Attack targeted tje Islamic Republic of Iran.
The hacktitic landscape is completely different: maybe hacktivists have chosen to go on vacation since June 2012 has apparently shown a decreasing trend, in sharp contrast with an year ago, when the information security community lived one of its most troubled periods.
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 timeline.
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.
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.
Browsing Security Predictions for 2012
Update 01/11/2012: Year-to-Tear comparison with 2011 Security Predictions
The new year has just come, vacations are over, and, as usually happens in this period, information security professionals use to wonder what the new year will bring them from an infosec perspective. The last year has been rich of events, whose echo is still resounding, and as a consequence, if RSA and Sony breach were not enough, the main (and somehow obvious) question is: will 2012 stop this trend or rather bring it to unprecedented levels, or, in other words, which threat vectors will disturb the (already troubled) administrators’ sleep?
Unfortunately my divination skills are not so developed (in that case I would not be here), but security firms can give a crucial help since they started to unveil their security predictions for 2012, at least since the half of December, so putting them together, and analyzing them is quite a straightforward and amusing task. Maybe even more amusing will be, in twelve years, to see if they were correct or not.
The security prediction that I take into consideration included, at my sole discretion (and in rigorous alphabetical order):
• Cisco;
• Fortinet;
• Kaspersky;
• McAfee;
• Sophos;
• Trend Micro;
• Websense;
That is the only leader vendors for which I found predictions issued with original documents (feel free to indicate if I missed someone and I will be very glad to include them in the chart).
In any case, the landscape is quite heterogeneous since it encompasses security vendors covering different areas: one vendor, McAfee, covering all the areas (network, endpoint and content security), two vendors and one half focused on network and content security (Cisco, Fortinet and partially Sophos thanks to the Astaro acquisition), and two vendors focused essentially on endpoint security (Kaspersky and Trend Micro).
The following table summarizes their predictions:
In order to correctly understand the chart a premise is needed: as you will probably have already noticed, in several cases the predictions reflect the specific security focus for the analyzed vendor. For instance, Websense is focused on DLP, and that is the reason why the adoption of DLP is one of its predictions. Analogously McAfee is investing huge resources for Security on Silicon, and this implies that embedded systems and Malware Moving Beyond OS are present among its predictions. Same speech could be applied for Trend Micro and its Cloud Prediction and so on.
Some trends for this year are clearly emphasized: easily predictable Hactivism appears on 6 of the 7 vendors, as mobile (with different connotations) does. Social Media is on the spot as well as are SCADA, Embedded Systems and, quite surprisingly in my opinion, cloud. I would have expected a greater impact for APTs, but for a complete and more accurate analysis one should consider them together with threats targeting embedded systems or ICS. Even because according to several security firms, for instance Kasperky, APT Stuxnet-like will be used for tailored campaigns, whilst more “general purpose malware”, including botnets will be used for massive campaigns (this item is summarized as Mass Targeted Campaigns).
Some “old acquaintances” will be with us in 2012: consumerization, at least according to Sophos and Trend Micro (even if consumerization is strictly connected, if not overlapped with mobile) and, if the Comodo and Diginotar affaires were not enough, Rogue Certificates, according to McAfee. Instead some “new entries” are absolutely interesting, such as the threats related to NFC (even if in this case I would have expected a greater impact) or related to Virtual Currency. Besides let us hope that the prediction to adopt DNSSEC be more than a prediction but a consolidated practice.
The most conservative security firm? In my opinion Cisco. The most “visionary”? Maybe Fortinet, I found the “Crime as a Service (CaaS)” absolutely awesome, and most of all not so visionary, since there are already some (even if clumsy) attempts.
In any case with this plenty of Cyber Nightmares is not a surprise the fact the Enterprise security market is going to reach $23 billion worldwide in 2012 with a 8.7% growth year-on-year.
One Year Of Lulz (Part II)
Christmas has just gone and here it is my personal way to wish you a Happy New Year: the second part of my personal chart (first part here) of Main 2011 Cyber Attacks covering the time window from August to November 2011 (December is not yet finished, and featuring remarkable events, so expect an update very soon). This memorable year is nearly over and is time, if you feel nostalgic, to scroll down the second part of the list to review the main Cyber Events that contributed, in my opinion, to change the landscape and the rules of the (information security) game. Many events in this period among whom, IMHO, the most noticeable is the one carried on against Diginotar. Since then our trust in conventional authentication models is not (and will not be) the same anymore.
Of course this is my personal selection. Suggestions are well accepted and if you need more details about the cyber events in 2011, feel free to consult my 2011 Cyber Attacks Master Index. As usual after the page break you find all the references…
December 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
As usual, here it is my compilation of December Cyber Attacks.
It looks like that Christmas approaching is not stopping hackers who targeted a growing number of organizations including several security firms (Kaspersky, Nod 32 and Bitdefender) even if in secondary domains and with “simple” defacements.
Cyber chronicles report of Gemnet, another Certification Authority Breached in Holland (is the 12th security incident targeting CAs in 2011) and several massive data breaches targeting Finland (the fifth this year, affecting 16,000 users), online gambling (UB.com affecting 3.5 million of users), Telco (Telstra, affecting 70,000 users), and gaming, after the well known attacks to Sony, Sega and Nintendo, with Square Enix, which suffered a huge attacks compromising 1,800,000 users (even if it looks like no personal data were affected).
Online Payment services were also targeted by Cybercrookers: a Visa East European processor has been hit by a security breach, but also four Romanian home made hackers have been arrested for a massive credit card fraud affecting 200 restaurants for a total of 80,000 customers who had their data stolen.
As usual, hacktivism was one of the main trends for this first half of the month, which started with a resounding hacking to a Web Server belonging to ACNUR (United Nations Refugees Agency) leaking more than 200 credentials including the one belonging to President Mr. Barack Obama.
But from a mere hactvism perspective, Elections in Russia have been the main trigger as they indirectly generated several cyber events: not only during the election day, in which three web sites (a watchdog and two independent news agencies) were taken down by DDoS attacks, but also in the immediately following days, when a botnet flooded Twitter with Pro Kremlin hashtags, and an independent forum was also taken down by a further DDoS attacks. A trail of events which set a very dangerous precent.
Besides the ACNUR Hack, the Anonymous were also in the spotlight (a quite common occurrence this year) with some sparse attacks targeting several governments including in particular Brazil, inside what is called #OpAmazonia.
Even if not confirmed, it looks like that Anonymous Finland might somehow be related to the above mentioned breach occurred in Finland.
Other interesting events occurred in the first two weeks of December: the 0-day vulnerability affecting Adobe products, immediately exploited by hackers to carry on tailored phishing campaigns and most of hall, a targeted attack to a contractor, Lockheed Martin, but also another occurrence of DNS Cache Poisoning targeting the Republic of Congo domains of Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others.
Last but not least, the controversial GPS Spoofing, which allegedly allowed Iran to capture a U.S. Drone, even the GPS Spoofing on its own does not completely solve the mistery of the capture.
Other victims of the month include Norwich Airport, Coca Cola, and another Law Enforcement Agency (clearusa.org), which is currently unaivalable.
As usual after the page break you find all the references.
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)
SCADA Security: Bridge the Gap (Updated)
In the same hours in which I was writing the original article concerning the growing attention of utilities and security vendors versus SCADA security holes; an anonymous hacker put in practice the lesson and broke into wind turbine systems. He was able to break a 200 megawat wind turbine system owned by NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light, claiming revenge for an “illegitimate firing”. Having said that it is not yet known whether or not it is an hoax (Wind power company sees no evidence of reported hack), the data was posted to the Full Disclossure security mailing list Saturday anonymously, by someone using the name “Bgr R.” In the post, the author of the hack wrote:
Here comes my revenge for illegitimate firing from Florida Power & Light Company (FPL)
… ain’t nothing you can do with it, since your electricity is turned off !!!
Secure you SCADA better! Leaked files are attached …
In an e-mail interview, Bgr R said he’s a former employee who discovered a vulnerability in the company’s Cisco security management software. He used that vulnerability to hack into the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems used to control the turbines.
Even if the screenshots of the Wind Turbine management interface look legitimate, there are some big question marks. In his interview Bigr R didn’t say much about how he broke into the SCADA systems themselves and he didn’t demonstrate much insider knowledge of Florida Power & Light (FPL) systems.
Hoax or not, this event renews the attention on SCADA Security Issues… For my part I promise I will no longer write down Security Predictions 
SCADA Security: Bridge the Gap
Utilities and Security Vendors are taking very seriously the events of Stuxnet and they’re consequently running for cover. Although due to natural events, the dramatic facts of Fukushima have shown to the entire World (and likely to Cyber-terrorists) how close we are to the abyss of a nuclear meltdown, with the consequent fear that a simil-Stuxnet malware could give the final push (even if according to some urban legends Stuxnet might have played a role in the failure of cooling systems afterward the Tsunami of March 11, 2011).
In a previous post, I identified the Smart Grids (and more in general SCADA systems) as possible targets of Cyber-Attacks. Not only because they constitute one of the means through which the western world is trying to mitigate the effects on the energy bills of the chronic instability of the oil-producing countries and also the dependency from nuclear energy, but also because Smart Grids (and similar technologies based on Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) will be the core of the promising Green Smart City initiatives promoted by several important IT players.
Taken for granted the many benefits, in terms of flexibility and resilience, deriving from the adoption of an IP-based approach, from a security perspective one must consider that a smart grid is generally composed by IP-Enabled heterogeneous technologies, 15/20 years old (this is the typical life cycle of the components). These technologies, often not even of last generation, unfortunately were not created to ensure the security made necessary by the adoption of an open-world Internet approach. While, on one hand, the IP protocol provides the intelligence that allows the different nodes to think as a single entity, on the other hand, the adoption of such a “single ecosystem model” comes with the price of having to accept (and mitigate) the threats hidden inside the IP packets.
But not only IP: in terms of connectivity, Smart Grids represent a leap into the unknown, since, to further worsen the picture, control systems of Smart Grid are based on the reviled Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, which will have to necessarily reach a meaningful level of complexity to manage the proliferation of smart grids and the huge amount of data collected (the only thought of privacy issues makes me feel a subtle shudder), “old-school that’s SCADA Been Bolted Into Some sort of a newer technology“. Moreover utilities have hundreds of different standards and protocols, and teams that typically operate and maintain the infrastructures own very few IT skills. This also makes it difficult the convergence between different disciplines: the convergence between power distribution and IP-based control technologies is not supported by an analogous convergence between management infrastructures. This is also the outcome of a cultural gap: who manages the utilities does not completely (if not at all) trusts who comes from the IT world because of the hands-on approach of the latter, and hence tends to hide the management details of their closed world.
As a consequence energy utilities are “de facto” building a new Internet, a real parallel universe, as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which, in the wake of security concerns has promoted appropriate standards and specifications concerning smart grid cyber security of control systems. Analogously further support in this direction will be provided by NERC CIP (North American Electric Reliability Corp. ‘s Critical Infrastructure Protection Plan), recently updated which contains more than 100 standard and establishes requirements for protection of the critical elements of a Smart Grid. Security of Smart Grid Infrastructure is the Starting point and key element of the program.
It is not a coincidence that a recent report by market research firm Pike Research states that Smart grid cybersecurity will increase 62% between 2010 and 2011, and by 2015, the annual worldwide market spending will reach $1.3 billion. According to Pike Research senior analyst Bob Lockhart.
“Smart grid cybersecurity is significantly more complex than the traditional IT security world. It is a common misperception that IT networks and industrial control systems have the same cyber security issues and can be secured with the same countermeasures. They cannot. To successfully secure the electrical grid, utilities and their key suppliers must design solutions that effectively bridge the worlds of information and operations technology.”
Vendors are moving quickly to bulid the bridge and make SCADA premises secure. McAfee has recently announced a strategic partnership with Wind River (another Intel Subsidiary) for embedded devices, with particular focus on industrial control, energy management, automotive, national infrastructure, defense, networking and smartphones as well as emerging segments including smart grid, connected home health care, home gateways and tablets. In the same time, exactly on April, the 13th, the Security Manufacturer of Santa Clara announced a strict joint product certification initiative with Siemens-Division Industry Automation (the manufacturer of Industrial Control Systems hit by Stuxnet). In my opinion the latter press release is not important for the single product involved in the compatibility tests, but rather it states undoubtedly the fact that not only SCADA and IP technologies are converging in Smart Grids, but also security is converging and hence traditional IT focused security vendors are developing new initiatives to face these two sides of the coin. It is likely that similar initiatives will become more and more frequent in the security landscape, and the predictions contained in the Pike Research report will presumably act as a catalyzer.
Related articles
- Will Energy Facilities Be The Next Targets Of Cyber-War? (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- SCADA Security: Bridge the Gap (Updated) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
Will Energy Facilities Be The Next Targets Of Cyber-War?
I spent some time in reading the declarations of Comodo Hacker, the alleged author of the fake Certificates issued by mean of the compromising of a couple of (sigh!) Italian Comodo Partners, and I found some very interesting points far beyond the single event.
Actually, it had been clear from the beginning that the attack had been performed from an Iranian ISP, feeding the hypothesis of an Iranian Cyber Army action aimed to intercept emails from dissidents in a quite troubled moment from the Middle East after the winds of change blowing from the Maghreb.
Anyway Comodo Hacker was anxious to quickly put the record straight, declaring he was the only author of the attack, and, if one just wanted to involve an army on the event, had to consider that he was the only army, being able to rely on his own experience of 1000 programmers, 1000 project managers, 1000 hackers:
Now, even if the political connotation of the message still makes me think that behind this act there might be a real cyber army (but this is my personal opinion), this is not the real point. The real point is that this attack occurred as a kind of revenge against Stuxnet, and more in general the fact, supported by Comodo Hacker, that the U.S. and Israel where behind it.
Fight fire with fire, fight code with code…
The attack to Comodo Certificates has left a wide impact in the INFOSEC world and probably things will not be the same anymore since in few days all the strongholds, the identity security model relied on, have been miserably compromised (I took the liberty to add the RSA affaire to this event even if there is no evidence so far of a political matrix behind it). But there is another interesting point, and it is the third law of motion (you will not probably know I was a physic in my previous life) which, with not too much imagination, could be applied to infosec as well, if one considers the events that are happening: “the mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear”, which, in few and simple words should sound as: “to every cber-action corresponds an equal and opposite cyber-reaction”. If this is true, this means to me, as an infosec professional, that we will have to get used to similar cyber actions. Also from this point of view things will not be the same anymore…
Armed with this awareness, my mind runs inevitably among the dunes of the Libyan desert, where a civil war is being fought, now sadly familiar to all. Let me fly (but not too much) with my imagination and think that the Civil War will end up with the exile of Mr. Muammar Gaddafi. In this case it is likely to expect that he will find his revenge, not only with real terrorists act, but also with (cyber)terrorist acts, in the wake of the Comodo affaire, which, even if related to Iran, is the first known example of a cyber-terrorist act strictly related not only to the Stuxnet attack, but also to the movements flooding from Maghreb to Middle East, what I called the Mobile Warfare due to the primary role played by the mobile technologies inside these events.
We don’t have privacy in internet, we don’t have security in digital world, just wait and see… These lines can be considered as a kind of Declaration of Cyber-war against everything…
Targets of Cyberwar
Nowadays everything has a stream of bit inside and as a matter of fact is vulnerable to malware. What is happening in Libya (and the consequences on our energy bills), together with the risk of nuclear meltdown in Fukushima is pushing the so called Western world to reconsider its energy policy and accelerate the development of Smart Grids in order to promote a better, wiser use of energy. In these circumstances compromising an energy facility would have a huge practical and symbolic impact (do you remember the Night Dragon APT, tailored specifically for Oil Facilities?), that is the reason why, in my opinion, the first targets of this Cyber-terrorism reaction will be energy utilities. Few weeks ago I wrote an article (in Italian) concerning vulnerabilities and security of Smart Grids, which can be considered the “world of unknown” from a security perspective since they adopt an Internet open model to interconnect old legacy SCADA systems and, to make matters worse, the structures that govern the IT world and the SCADA world have a silo-ed approach being often mutually suspicious against each other. As a dark omen, few days later, a list of 34 0-day SCADA vulnerabilities was released by Luigi Auriemma, an Italian Researcher.
Think about it: compromising a smart grid with a SCADA malware could have potentially devastating consequences and should sound as a kind of dark revenge: imagine an Iranian SCADA malware sabotaging the energy facilities of U.S., and more in general the facilities the Western World is building to cut the umbilical cord that ties him strictly to the Middle East countries (that often are also the hottest as far as the political temperature is concerned).
Moreover, the development of electric vehicles will further complicate the scenario since they will be able to interconnect Directly to Home Area Networks (the borderline of Smart Grids), offering an unexpected (and probably not so complicated) ingress point for Cyber-Terrorists to Smart Grids, if it is true that nowadays a small car owns 30-50 ECU (Electronic Control Units) interconnected by a bidirectional Synchronous bus and governed by something like 100 millions of lines of codes. My dear friend and colleague, ICT Security expert and Aviation Guru, David Cenciotti will be glad to know that an F-22 Raptor owns about one tenth of lines of codes (“only” 1.7 millions), the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter about 5.7 millions and Boeing 787 Dreamliner about 6.5 millions used to manage avionics and on-board systems. Of course one may not exclude a priori that these systems may be target as well of specific tailored malware (do you remember the intrepid Jeff Goldbum injecting on the mother ship of Aliens on Independence Day?)
Prepare ourselves for a Smart Grid Stuxnet? I think there is enough to be worried about for the next years…
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…
