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16-31 January 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Two Weeks Living Dangerously! I have no other words to describe this second half of January (first two weeks here) that has shown an unprecedented level of attacks! And if a good day starts with the morning, this will be a very troubled year from an information security perspective.
Not only the peaks of DDoS attacks against the US Banks have reached an unstoppable peak, but, most of all, at the end of the month details have been unveiled about a massive cyber-espionage campaign allegedly orchestrated by Chinese hackers against some major US media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Bloomberg News.
A very very long list of targets this month, with some high profile victims such as the U.S. Sentencing Commission, whose web site has been hacked twice and turned into an Asteroid game, but also Renault Argentina that suffered 37,000 accounts leaked.
To summarize this month is really impossible, you just have to scroll down the timeline to realize the hacking spree in this January 2013.
If this trend continues, I will have to decrease the frequency of publication…
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.
1-15 January 2013 Cyber Attacks Statistics
Here are the statistics for the Cyber Attacks occurred in the first half of January 2013 and included inside the corresponding Cyber Attack Timeline.
The Daily Trend of January shows a couple of peaks in correspondence of the 3rd and the 10th of January, during the DDoS attacks of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters (another minor peak occurred during the 8th of January. On average the sample included 4.67 attacks per day.
Even the attack by the Islamist collective contributed to the overtake of the hacktivism against cyber crime shown in the Motivations Behind Attacks chart. One attack on two of the sample was done for this purpose, even if the authors with different connotations: from the protests against the infamous video “The Innocence of Muslims”, to the retaliation for the suicide of Aaron Swartz, going through the different operations carried on by the Anonymous.
In any case, the Distribution of Attack Techniques chart shows frequency of DDoS Attacks did not prevent the SQL Injection of being the preferred weapon for cybercrooks with the 35% of occurrences. DDoS is immediately behind with the 27% of occurrences.
However, the Distribution Of Targets chart shows that targets belonging to finance were the most preferred in this period with the 25% of preferences, certainly a consequence of the wave of DDoS attacks against US Banks. Governmental targets are very close with the 24% of occurrences. Industry targets complete the podium with the 13%, just before targets belonging to Organizations and Education, respectively with the 8% and 7%.
As usual, no need to remind that the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks included in the 1-15 January 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence it does not pretend to be exhaustive but only aims to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape”.
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.
Related articles
- 1-15 January 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline (hackmageddon.com)
- December 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (hackmageddon.com)
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.
December 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics
December (and hence this 2012) is gone, so it is time to analyze the statistics for the corresponding Cyber Attacks Timelines.
According to the Daily Trend of December, the Christmas break has not stopped the hackers. The trend is quite constant (with a decrease around the end of the month) and with a peak around the 21st of December (the alleged End of the World according to the Mayan Calendar).
The Motivations Behind Attacks chart shows an inversion of tendency in comparison with November. Cyber Crime and Hacktivism had nearly the same impact with respectively the 47% and 46% of occurrences. It is also interesting the presence of Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage Campaigns (mainly concentrated in the East).
Also in December, the Distribution Of Attack Techniques Chart confirms the predominance of SQL Injection, even if with a slightly lower impact than the previous month when it was at the 52%: nearly one attack on three has been carried on with this technique. Instead, in almost one attack on four, there was not enough information. Despite the attacks by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, the weight of DDoS is progressively decreasing (this category ranks at number four with the 17% of occurrences), while, on the other side, the number of discovered targeted attacks is growing. Maybe they are increasingly attracting the attention of Security Researchers.
Again an inversion in comparison with November: the Distribution Of Targets chart shows that in the December cyber-crooks diverted their attention for targets belonging to the Government sector, even if industries and organizations are very close (the peak of the latter is due to the campaign of the Anonymous against the Westboro Baptist Church. It is also interesting to notice the peak of attacks against Financial institutions mainly due to the waves of DDoS attacks against the U.S. Bank.
As usual, no need to remind that the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks included in the December Cyber Attacks Timeline (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence it does not pretend to be exhaustive but only aims to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape”.
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), at the Cyber Attack Statistics, 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).
Related articles
- November 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (hackmageddon.com)
- October 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (hackmageddon.com)
1-15 December 2012 Attack Statistics
Let us gave a look to the landscape of Cyber Attacks, during the first half of December 2012. Apparently cybercrooks are taking a break for Christmas, since, according to my selection Criteria, the number of attacks has shown a small decrease in comparison with the previous months.
The Daily Trend shows an inconstant trend with two peaks around respectively the 3rd December and the 11th and 12th (the latter due to the peak of Cyber Attacks against the US Banks).
The Motivations Behind Attacks chart shows, for the first time since August, the overtake of Hacktivism against Cyber Crime. Let us see if this trend will be confirmed until the end of the year.
The Distribution Of Attacks chart confirms that SQL Injection confirms to be the weapon preferred by Cyber Attackers with nearly one third of the occurrences (the value reaches nearly the 40% if one sums also the cases in which the attack seems to have been carried on with this technique but no enough evidences have been collected). In my opinion it is also important to notice the presence in the chart of several attacks perpetrated exploiting application vulnerabilities, but also the growing presence of targeted attacks (as usual you can find the details on the corresponding Cyber Attack Timeline.
Instead, at least for the first half of the month, the Distribution of Targets chart seems quite fragmented. Governmental targets lead the chart, but Financial, Industrial and Organizational targets are very close. Maybe the fragmentation depends from the partial sample. The second half of December will tell us if cybercrooks will concentrate their attacks against a specific sector.
As usual, no need to remind that the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence it does not pretend to be exhaustive but only aims to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape”.
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.
November 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics
From an information security perspective, November has been a month with two faces. The first part of the month has been characterized by hacktivism, nevertheless the Cyber Crime has reached an unprecedented level with the 69% of occurrences.
Let us begin with the Daily Trend chart. This chart confirms the influence of cyber attacks motivated by hacktivism in the first half of the month that explain the peak around the 5th of November.
Despite the peak of attacks motivated by hacktivism occurred in the first half of the November, the Motivations Behind Attacks chart confirms the predominance of Cyber Crime with nearly the 69% of occurrences, followed by Hacktivism with the 28%. This growing trend of Cyber Crime is in line with the previous months even if the frequency has reached an unprecedented value (the higher so far).
Also in November, the Distribution Of Attack Techniques Chart confirms the predominance of SQL Injection. Nearly one attack on two has been carried on with this technique. It is also interesting to notice the presence of DNS Poisoning: November has brought three attacks executed with this method.
The Distribution Of Targets chart shows the preference of cyber-crooks for targets belonging to the Industry sector. Even if the difference with governmental targets is only one point (19% against 18%), this is in contrast with the previous month where the ranks were exactly opposed (governmental targets led the chart with the 31%). Educational targets are “stable” at the 11% (were the 13% during the previous month). Curiously this month has registered a peak of attacks against Torrent sites.
As usual, no need to remind that the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks included in the November Cyber Attacks Timeline (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence it does not pretend to be exhaustive but only aims to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape”.
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), at the Cyber Attack Statistics, 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).
Related articles
- 1-15 November 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (hackmageddon.com)
- October 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (hackmageddon.com)
1-15 November 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics
This November 2012 seems really to be endless from an Information Security Perspective. We have assisted so far to a remarkable number of Cyber Attacks.
As usual is it time to provide the partial snapshot of November taken from the corresponding Cyber Attack Timeline and covering the first half of the month. Please notice that the stats below do not include the following events:
- The massive leak of Team Ghostshell for ProjectBlackStar (2.5 million accounts leaked from different targets in Russia);
- The Cyber Attacks executed by the Anonymous and the other affiliated collectives for OpIsrael.
The above attacks have been executed on a much wider scale so counting the singe events would be senseless. Anyway other Sites have done an excellent Job for the aggregated stats of those attacks, see for instance OZDC.net for Project Black Star, and OpIsrael.
With this in mind let us proceed to examine the Daily Trend Of Attacks. Please notice the peak of November 5 (no need to comment it!):
Of course the Motivations Chart reflects this trend with the 60% of the attacks considered in my sample led by hackitivism. Apparently no different motivations than Hacktivism and Cyber Crime have been observed in this period.
I use not to take into considerations defacements, but this time their impact on the past two weeks has been very high. This is clearly shown in the Techniques Chart, where they rank at the first place, together with SQL Injection, with the 33% of occurrences:
As usual, the Target chart shows that Governmental targets rank at number one, immediately followed by targets belonging to Industry. Please notice the peak of Torrent Sites. This is due to the waves of DDoS Attacks carried on by Zeiko Anonymous, only because he has not been able to obtain an invite to a close torrent forum. Nothing to add: the reasons for hacking may range from Cyberwar to “simple” whims.
Please, as usual, take the sample very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence does not pretend to be exhaustive but only aims to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape”.
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), at the Cyber Attack Statistics, 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).
Related articles
- October 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (hackmageddon.com)
Yet Another Breach Targeting Adobe
Hard Times for Adobe. On the evening of Tuesday, November 13, 2012, immediately after the claims of an alleged Egyptian hacker dubbed ViruS_HimA, the company has taken offline the connectusers.com forum.
In his pastebin post, the hacker claims to have breached an unidentified Adobe server, gaining full access to it and dumping the whole Database: over 150,000 emails, passwords with full data of Adobe customers and partners with some users belonging to Adobe, Google, NASA, Military Institutions, etc.).
As a proof of his breach he has published some screenshot, and a text file containing 645 records with emails belonging to some selected domains: “adobe.com”, “.mil” and “.gov”.
After the rumors, the breach has been finally confirmed by Adobe in a blog post where the company has announced the decision to take the forum offline and to reset the passwords.
Meanwhile more details about the breach are emerging: the hacker allegedly exploited a SQL Injection vulnerability, and also the cracked passwords from the breach show a lack of security with no salt, no iteration, and finally no complexity. Unfortunately we are getting more and more used to attacks exploiting SQLi and to poorly-protected passwords.
Unfortunately Adobe continues to attract the attention of cyber-attackers. At the end of September the company discovered a targeted attack against a build server accessing the code signing infrastructure with the consequence that the certificates of 5000+ applications were revoked, one month and half later the passwords of 150,000 forum users are at risk.
Related articles
DDoS and SQLi are the Most… Discussed Attack Techniques
Imperva has just published the results of its annual analysis on one of the largest-known hacker forums counting approximately 250,000 members.
The research (also made on other smaller forums) used the forum’s search engine capabilities to analyze conversations by topic using specific keywords. Unfortunately no details have been provided about the methodology used to collect the data, however the results show that SQL Injection and DDoS are the most discussed topic, both of them with the 19% of discussion volume (I am glad to see that the results are coherent with the findings of my Cyber Attack Statistics).
Of course the data must be taken with the needed caution since the analyzed sample could not be entirely consistent. As Imperva admits: “The site we examined is not a hardcore crime site, but it’s not entirely softcore. New hackers come to this site to learn and,on the other hand, more experienced hackers teach to gain “street cred” and recognition […]. Typically, once hackers have gained enough of a reputation, they go to a more hardcore, invitation-only forum.” This probably means that the incidence of the two attack techniques is overrated since one should expect a beginner hacker to approach the easiest and most common attack methods for which there are many tools available.
Anyway the events of the last months show that an attack does not deserve less attention only because it is carried on by a beginner, nor a beginner worries too much if he uses automated tools without full knowledge and awareness. A look to the infosec chronicles of the last period is sufficient to verify that DDoS and SQLi attacks are always in the first pages.
Sadly, Imperva estimates that only the 5% of the security budget is spent on thwarting SQL Injection attacks.
Other interesting findings of the research are: the fact that social networks pose a major interest for hackers since they are becoming a prominent source of information and potential monetary gain (Facebook was the most discussed social media platform, with 39%, immediately followed by Twitter at 37%), and also the fact that E-whoring is becoming one of the most common methods for beginner cyber criminals to gain easy money (more than 13,000 threads observed).
1-15 October 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Apparently October has shown a decrease in the number of Cyber Attacks. At least from a mere numerical perspective. It is not a coincidence that I used the term “Apparently” since if we consider the most important event of the month: the massive leak from Worldwide universities executed by Team GhostShell inside their ProjectWestWind operation, things are well different.
The one carried on by Team Ghost Shell (approximately 120k accounts leaked) is for sure the most important operation of the current month which has also shown the first virtual hacking operation (at least as far as I remember): the massive death of avatars inside World of Warcraft.
Other remarkable events in the first half of October concern the attack to Playspan (possibly millions of users affected), the new waves of DDoS cyber attacks against US banks, and an alleged hijacking to the Irish domains of Google and Yahoo!.
It worth to mention also the breach of University of Georgia (8,500 users affected) and the 400,000 bucks stolen by unknown hackers to the City of Burlington.
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).
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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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