Archive
16-30 November 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
November has gone and it’s time to review this month’s cyber landscape.
From a Cyber Crime perspective, November 2012 will be probably remembered for the breach to Nationwide, one of the largest insurance and financial services providers in the US, a breach that has potentially left up to 1 million users exposed. Unfortunately, in terms of massive breaches, this is not the only remarkable event of the month, just at the end Acer India has suffered a massive cyber attack culminated in the leak of nearly 15,000 records. Not comparable with the breach that affected Nationwide, but for sure of big impact.
Also on the cyber-espionage front this month has been interesting: JAXA, the Japan Space agency has been targeted by yet another targeted attack (after January 2012) and Symantec has discovered W32.Narilam, a new destructive malware targeting several nations in Middle East.
The hacktivist front has been characterized by the dramatic events in Gaza, the attacks have reached a peak around the first half of the month (as in the first part, I did not take into consideration the attacks carried on in name of OpIsrael for which I wrote a dedicated timeline), in any case the Anonymous have found another way to mark this month, leaking 1 Gb of documents from the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Last but not least, this month has seen three large-scale DNS Poisoning attacks (against the Pakistani Registrar PKNIC, Inc., GoDaddy, and the Romanian Registrar). A very rare occurrence!
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).
Related articles
- 1-15 November 2012 Cyber Attacks Statistics (hackmageddon.com)
- Timeline of Opisrael (hackmageddon.com)
February 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Find here February 2012 Cyber Attacks Timelime Part I.
With a small delay (my apologies but the end of February has been very busy for me and not only for Cybercrooks as you will soon see), here it is the second part of my compilation with the main Cyber Attacks for February 2012.
Easily Predictable, the Hacktivism is still the main concern for System Administrators, in particular for the ones of Stratfor who suffered a huge leak of 5 million of emails.
On the same front, the threats of the Anonymous for the Friday actions have come true and as a matter of fact Law Enforcement Agencies suffered other remarkable breaches in this month: Infragard for the second time and also Interpol (a new entry) that was taken down after the arrest of 25 members of the collective. Anti ACTA protest also continue to shake Europe as also the delicate economical and social situation in Greece.
Last but not least, this month has also seen an unforgettable leak, affecting potentially more than 1.000.000 Youporn users.
As usual, the chart does not include the events related to Middle East Cyber War Timeline, that you may find at this link, as they “deserve” a dedicated timeline.
After the jump you find all the references, follows @paulsparrows for the latest updates on a regular basis and also have a look to the 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline Master Index.
February 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
February 2012 brings a new domain for my blog (it’s just a hackmaggedon) and confirms the trend of January with a constant and unprecedented increase in number and complexity of the events. Driven by the echo of the ACTA movement, the Anonymous have performed a massive wave of attacks, resuming the old habits of targeting Law Enforcement agencies. From this point of view, this month has registered several remarkable events among which the hacking of a conf call between the FBI and Scotland Yard and the takedown of the Homeland Security and the CIA Web sites.
The Hacktivism front has been very hot as well, with attacks in Europe and Syria (with the presidential e-mail hacked) and even against United Nations (once again) and NASDAQ Stock Exchange.
Scroll down the list and enjoy to discover the (too) many illustrious victims including Intel, Microsoft, Foxconn and Philips. After the jump you find all the references and do not forget to follow @paulsparrows for the latest updates. Also have a look to the Middle East Cyberwar Timeline, and the master indexes for 2011 and 2012 Cyber Attacks.
Addendum: of course it is impossible to keep count of the huge amount of sites attacked or defaced as an aftermath of the Anti ACTA movements. In any case I suggest you a couple of links that mat be really helpful:
- List of all vulnerable websites attacked by anonymous Part II (updated daily) (via cylaw.info)
- List of Websites Hacked, Defaced & Taken Down By Anonymous (via valuewalk.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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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? |
| 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 |
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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. |
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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) |
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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. |
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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. |
? |
Anonymous vs Syrian Electronic Soldiers
Hactivism is making possible to bring wars and revolutions on the cyberspace, the fifth domain of war. In particular the Arab Spring has given the definitive consecration to politically driven hacking actions that have proven to be a key factor inside the protests that are changing the political landscape in the Middle East: non conventional weapons used together with “traditional” methods by both parties involved on revolutions: cyber-opponents vs cyber-supporters.
Tunisia has been the first example of this new way to provide backing to social protests: at the beginning of 2011 the Anonymous activists targeted Tunisian government sites. It was the 4th of January and this action (or Operation quoting the same term used by the Anonymous) showed to the world the real, political and social power of the Cyber warfare.
Few days later (June, 26th 2011) the same fate befell to Egypt: government sites were targeted with DDOS attacks which contributed to draw attention to ongoing protests which led to the fall of President Mubarak.
Following the wake of the Arab spring, the Anonymous also took position in the Libyan Revolution declaring their engagement with the rebels. Although, from an information security perspective, no practical consequence followed this statement, it had a huge symbolic significance, since in a clear and decisive manner, an hacker crew crossed the boundary of the cyberspace and took position on a social and political event even before performing any hacking acton.
But in Syria the revolution fought in the fifth domain has reached its “bloody” peak. On August, the 7th 2011 the Anonymous targeted the Syrian Ministry of Defense with a resounding defacement. A couple of days later, in retaliation of the previous defacement, the Syrian Electronic Soldiers defaced Anonplus, the Anonymous Social Network, that had already been, a couple of weeks before, the target of a defacement performed by the same Syrian Crew.
But the “war inside the war” fought between the two groups does not stop here: following the bloody events in Syria, on Sunday, 25th of September, the Anonymous decided to open again the hostilities unleashing a chain of defacement action, 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.
Of course a retaliation of the Syrian Electronic Soldier was predictable (and close in time) and targeted, in an unexpected manner, one of the most important US Universities, the University of Harvard which was victim of a resounding defacement on Monday, the 26th of September.
So far the two Cyber Armies have shown an unprecedented impetus in countering their respective acts of cyberwar. Probably the story will not end up here and, most of all, we will have to get used to watch the wars and the revolutions on a double perspective involving real battlefields and virtual battlefields. The problem here is that information security professionals and system administrators are not likely to be mere spectators, but the real soldiers of this non conventional war.
AnonPlus Hacked Again By Syrian Hackers
The overlapping between Real Wars (and revolution) and Cyber Wars (or better to say Cyber Revolutions) is getting stronger and stronger. The last example, once again, in Syria with a sparring match between Anonymous and a group of Syrian Hackers.
Anonymous did the first move: following the bloody events in Syria, a couple of days ago Anoymous decided to deface the Syrian Ministry of Defense, leaving a note in support of the rioters.
Few hours later, in retaliation of the previous act, a Syrian Group of hackers has defaced (for the third time), Anonplus, the alternative Social Network in phase of deployment by Anonymous, posting several gruesome images.
Suspects are directed to Syrian Electronic Soldiers, which already defaced a previous domain of Anonplus, although it looks like Anonymous claimed, by mean of a tweet from LulzSec Leader Sabu, that AnonPlus is not their any Official site.
Another further confirmation that Cyber War is really becoming the fifth domain of war…
Related articles
- AnonPlus Hacked (Again) by Syrian Group (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
AnonPlus Hacked (Again) by Syrian Group
Update August 9: Anonplus defaced once again by Syrian Hackers!
There is no peace for AnonPlus the alternative Social Network established by the Infamous Hacking Group. Only a couple of days after the defacement made by a Turkish Hacking Group, Anonplus, the alternative Social Network established by Anonymous after their account was banned from Google+ has been defaced again by a couple of Syrian Hackers (Th3 Pr0 & SaQeR Syria) in name of the Syrian Electronic Army:
A group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria, and this distortion is carried out by many Facebook pages that deliberately work to spread hatred and sectarian intolerance between the peoples of Syria to fuel the uprising.
In this moment, Surfing to Anonplus, returns the following page:
Which contains a link to a Facebook Page backing the Syrian Regime (in opposition to the Syrian Revolution Facebook Page).
Clearly the numerous Anonymous hactivism campaings nare attracting the unwelcome attentions not only by police squads of all five continents, but also from rival hacking grouops divided by ideological barriers.
As a matter of fact, at the beginning of July, Anonymous performed some DDoS attacks against Syrian Embassies all around the world as part of their Operation Syria. A similar action, Operation Turkey was declared at the beginning of June, which probably explain the above quoted previous defacement, which occurred at the AnonPlus Social Network on July the 22nd.
The Anonymous Tide is changing the world of hacking and hactivism: at the beginning of 2011, hactivism was included among the Top Security Concerns for 2011 from the leading security vendors. Afer seven months, it looks like that (actually easy) prediction was correct. Not only many would-be hackers have been enrolled (perhaps in a reckless and superficial manner) in hactivism campaigns (and often get stuck in the mesh of justice as it never happened in the last years, see for instance the FBI raids), but, most of all, the cyberspace is really becoming the fifth domain of war, used not only for propaganda, but also to carry on bombastic attacks with social, political, and military scopes.
Moreover, it looks like this is a further consequence of what I defined Consumerization of Warfare, that is the growing use of Consumer Technologies such as Social Networks for Military and Political Operations: the “declaration of war” of the Syrian Group starts from a Facebook page built up to stop the use of Facebook from their adversaries as a mean of communication with the Syrians inside and outside Syria “to spread their destructive ideas” (quoted litterally).
In this context a sentence is particularly meaningful:
So let’s fight them using their weapon
Probably at the beginning the Syrian group wanted to use the so called “their (same) weapon” exclusively against internal enemies. Once realized the latter were not the only to use the social weapons against their cause (Hacking groups, even if not motivated by hactivism make extensive use of Social Media to spread their Word), decided to expand the scope of their campaign, including anonymous among their targets.
Now it’s up to the Anonymous to place their move on the Cyberwar chessboard.
Related articles
- AnonPlus, Anonymous’s social network, is hacked (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)

































