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Middle East Cyber War Update
Another week of Cyber War in the Middle East…
Another week in which pro Israeli hackers seem to have disappeared, and hence have apparently left the scene to Pro Palestine hackers, although not so many high-profile actions have been reported in this period. The only exception to this schema is represented by Mauritania Hacker Team who dumped 4000 login accounts from Microsoft Israel Dynamics CRM Online website. This action is particularly significant… Not because it targeted a Cloud service, and not even because it targeted a Microsoft Cloud Service, but most of all because on the wake of the multiple dumps performed by Pro Arab hackers against Israel (among which the dump to the Microsoft Cloud Service was only the latest), the Israel’s Justice Ministry has releases guidelines forbidding unnecessary collection of personal national identification numbers. This is the first time in which the aftermath of a Cyber War has direct implications on everyday life.
From this point of view the wars fought on the cyber domain are completely different from the wars fought on the real world… In the cyber battlefield the civilians are the primary targets (since they have their personal data dumped) and not collateral victims…
Read the complete timeline of the Middle East Cyber War at this link and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
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)
July 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline
This awful infosec July is over, and finally we can sum up the Cyber Attacks reported during this month. I collected all the available information and inserted it inside the following chart. Where possible (that is enough information available) I tried to estimate the cost of the attacks using the indications from the Ponemon’s insitute according to which the average cost of a Data Breach is US $214 for each compromised record. The total sum (for the known attacks) is around $7.6 billion, mainly due to the “National Data Breach” of the South Korean Social Network Cyworld.
Approximately 16 attacks were directly or indirectly related to Antisec or Anonymous, they promised an hot summer and unfortunately are keeping their word…
Useful resources for compiling the (very long) chart were taken from:

1 http://www.zeropaid.com/news/94099/abhaxas-dumps-details-of-the-internal-florida-voting-database-online/
2 http://www.pcworld.com/article/235016/hackers_claim_apple_online_data_was_compromised.html
3 http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/07/fox-news-twitter-account-hacked-by.html
4 http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/07/05/sony-music-ireland-hackers/
5 http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20077268-245/sophisticated-attack-targets-two-energy-dept-labs
6 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/dump-up-the-kids/
7 http://www.zeropaid.com/news/94250/abhaxas-hacks-floridas-voting-system-again/
8 http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2086749/anonymous-boasts-takedown-turkish-sites
9 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/08/patriotic_portuguese_hackers_hit_moody/
10 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/another-fbi-contractor-hacked/5
11 http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/German-Federal-Police-servers-compromised-1276115.html
12 http://www.hackersbay.in/2011/07/anonymous-shuts-down-ministry-of.html
13 http://www.kiplinger.com/securityfaq/
14 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/another-one-bytes-the-dump/
15 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/monsanto-hack-info-of-2500-employees-leaked/
16 http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/07/toshiba-database-hacked-and-user.html
17 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/the-mother-of-all-breaches/
18 http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2011/07/16/lady-gaga-website-hacked-and-fans-details-stolen-115875-23274356/
19 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/the-lulzsec-boat-is-back-and-sails-under-the-sun/
20 http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20081405-83/anonymous-claims-to-have-breached-nato-security
21 http://www.cyberwarnews.info/2011/07/24/philippians-congress-hacked-by-bashcrew/
22 http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/07/22/anonplus-anonymouss-social-network-is-hacked/
23 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/anonplus-hacked-again-by-syrian-group/
24 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/italian-cyber-police-hacked/
25 http://austrianindependent.com/news/Business/2011-07-26/8537/ORF_hack_attack_worse_than_feared
26 http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20110728000881
27 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/anonymous-claims-another-fbi-contractor-hacked/
28 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/italian-anonymous-owned/
29 http://paulsparrows.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/its-a-cruel-summer/
30 http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/07/italys-police-it-network-vitrocisetit.html
Related articles
- 2011 Cyber Attacks (and Cyber Costs) Timeline (Updated) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- 2011 CyberAttacks Timeline (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- 50 Days of Hunt (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- LulzSec hacking: a timeline (telegraph.co.uk)
- Anonymous Denies Paternity For the CNAIPIC Hack (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
2011 Cyber Attacks (and Cyber Costs) Timeline (Updated)
Update: Cyber Attacks Timeline Update for July 2011
As already suggested, I considered the original 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline graph by Thomson Reuters not enough complete since it did not show some important attacks occurred during this tremendous 2011. This is the reason why I decided to draw an enhanced version which shows, according to my personal opinion (and metric), the list of 2011 major cyber attacks both for size and impact. Moreover in this version I added the cost of the breaches (where possible), and the alleged kind of attack perpetrated.
All the data were taken from the bulletins or statements released by the victims, or from the tweets released by the attackers.
Costs were calculated, where possible, using the indications from the Ponemon’s insitute: the average cost of a Data Breach is US $214 for each compromised record, if the targeted company decided to respond immediately the cost is around UD $268 for each compromised record, which drops to US $ 174 if the company takes longer to react.
The Total Cost is an incredible number: nearly US $ 18 billion.
Useless to say, Sony achieves rank #1 with US $ 13.4 billion. In this unenviable chart, Epsilon gains the second place with an estimated cost for its breach, of US $ 4 billion.
The others breaches, although not comparable with the previous ones, if summed, allow to achieve the grand total.
Even if smaller in size, and apparently in importance, I decided to insert in the chart also the attack to Comodo Certificates, happened in March, the 24th. In this annus horribilis, it came immediately after the RSA affaire and it has decreed, together with the RSA breach, the fall of the modern bastions of Strong Authentication (in few days tokens and certificates have proved to be vulnerable). Moreover I consider the message of the author a memorable declaration of Cyberwar. On the trail of the RSA breach the wave of attacks towards US contractors is noteworthy as well.
Hackers focused on Media Sites (Fox, PBS, Sony, Sony BMG), with a clear message against censorship (and probably the neverending problem of copyright). Interesting the second attack to PBS made to show the poor skill of LuzSecs by Warv0x, one of their enemies. In the last part of June Videogame industry was the preferred target (also Epic suffered a breach) with different intentions: LulzSec attacked Nintendo and Bethesda (the second attack resulted in data breach for the victim), but offered to avenge Sega (the manufacturer of Dreamcast), after the disastrous breach.
Direct attacks to governments focused essentially on LOIC based DDoS, albeit some infamous breaches to related sites (as in case of Infoguard/FBI and NATO) lead to Data Breaches.
Last but not least, please notice the intense activity from LulzSec in their intense “50 days of living dangerously”, just before the sudden dissolution of the group happened on June, the 25th.
Related articles
- What do RSA, Epsilon and Sony breaches have in common? (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- It was only a matter of time… (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- More Random Thoughts on the RSA Breach (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- 2011 CyberAttacks Timeline (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)

























