Archive
16 – 31 August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline
Here the first part with the timeline from 1 to 15 August 2012.
Here we are with the second part of the August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline. A second part of the month that has been characterized by hacktivism, most of all because of the so-called OperationFreeAssange, which has targeted many high-profile websites.
Among the targets of the month, Philips has been particularly “unlucky”. The Dutch giant has been the victim of three Cyber Attacks, even if there are several doubts about the authenticity of the hacks.
But maybe the biggest operation of the month is the #ProjectHellFire, carried on by the collective @TeamGhostShell, that has unleashed something as 1 million of accounts belonging to different sectors (banks, government agencies, consulting firms, law enforcement and the CIA). And the group promises new action for this Fall and Winter.
The Middle East confirms to be very hot, with a new Cyber Attack, probably another occurrence of Shamoon, targeting RasGas, yet another Oil Company.
Just one note: of course it is impossible to track all the targets of the #OpFreeAssange. You can find a complete list at cyberwarnews.info.
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).
August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
The first half of August has seen a revamping of Hacktivism, encouraged by the takedown of the famous Torrent Tracker Demonoid (and the consequent OpDemonoid targeting most of all Ukrainian sites), but also encouraged by OpAustralia, the wave of attacks against Australian Web Sites carried on against the Australian Internet Surveillance Law (apparently the latter operation was successful since the controversial law has been put on standby).
But Hacktivism was not the only “trend topic” for this period. The Middle East continues to be the cradle for unexpected cyber weapons threats. In August, two new occurrences of allegedly state sponsored malware: Gauss, a cyber-espionage tool targeting bank transaction, and Shamoon , a destructive malware targeting energy companies.
These are probably the most remarkable Cyber Events of this period, which has also seen a purported giant breach targeting Pearl.fr, a French e-commerce website whose 729,000 accounts, together with over 1 million bank transaction details, have been subtracted by hackers.
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).
May 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
As usual, here it is the second part of the Cyber Attacks Timeline for the month of May 2012: a month particularly rich of Cyber Events. As you will probably know, the Flame malware has monopolized the attention, deserving the most attention from the Information Security Professional.
Nevertheless the scene has offered many interesting events, among which it worths to mention the breach of 123,000 federal employees records, the breach affecting University of Nebraska, and, last but not least, the breach against WHCMS (which, as we will soon see, has proved to be fatal for its author).
The hacktivist front is still hot and preannounces another hot summer. On the other hand the authors of several remarkable cyber-criminal actions are probably going to leave the scene: the long trail of arrests made by Law Enforcement Agencies against hackers has continued in this month and has hence led to the arrest of Cosmo, the leader of the infamous group UGNazi, which claimed to be the author of the Cyber Attack against WHCMS.
In your opinion are the arrests against hackers really going to stop the growing number of Cyber Attacks (acting as a deterrent)?
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.
After the jump you find all the references, and at this link the first part covering 1-15 May.
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.
And The Winner Is…
The Pwnie Awards is an annual awards ceremony celebrating the achievements and failures of security researchers and the security community.
The awards are given out once an year. The fifth annual ceremony will take place on Aug 3rd, 2011 in Las Vegas at the BlackHat USA security conference.
In 2011 there will be nine award categories:
- Pwnie for Best Server-Side Bug
- Pwnie for Best Client-Side Bug
- Pwnie for Best Privilege Escalation Bug
- Pwnie for Most Innovative Research
- Pwnie for Lamest Vendor Response
- Pwnie for Best Song
- Pwnie for Most Epic FAIL
- Pwnie for Lifetime Achievement
- Pwnie for Epic Ownage
Do you remember the hacking matrix I posted several days ago, emphasizing impact and innovation as two key factors in hacking? Well, it looks like the panel of the judges did recognized the value of these two factor (together with a certain amount of shallowness in case of Sony).
(Nearly) all the events drawn in the matrix, which happened in 2011 deserved a nominee for the prize, with the exception of Epsilon Data Breach, whose likely category, Most Epic Fail, has been literally monopolized by Sony with 5 nominations.
RSA deserved a nomination as well in the category “Lamest Vendor Response”, while the category Epic Ownage has been monopolized by LulzSec. Even if LulzSec has been appointed only once for “hacking everyone”, there is also a nomination for Anonymous for “hacking HBGary Federal”, probably this is a mistake since it looks clear that HBGary Federal was hacked by the Lulz Boat as well (as also ironically stressed by the LulzSec group itself).
The other two nominations for the Epic Ownage? Bradley Manning and Wikileaks (but I would also have inserted Lady Gaga since a fake Lady Gaga CD was used to perform the leak, and… most of all Stuxnet, who ranked at the top for impact an innovation in this matrix. Stuxnet is considered the first of a new generation of Cyber-weapons even if, so far, no other malware of similar sophistication has been detected (but U.S. Department of Homeland Security fears a modified Stuxnet variant could soon attack U.S. Infrastructure).
Interesting to notice, as suggested by Network World, whoever will win the Epic Ownage prize will be, in theory, a criminal for the law, consequently Law enforcement could be seriously interested to see if anyone actually shows up to this year to accept the prize for Epic Ownage at Black Hat, since all the nominees will face possible criminal charges.
At this link a complete list of the nominations.
Related articles
- Black Hat Pwnie Award Winner Will Be a Criminal (pcworld.com)
- The Two Faces of Hacking (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
Someone has been arrested for using LOIC
Probably LOIC is not so safe as it was supposed to be.
Yesterday FOX News (curiously the American province of the Murdoch Empire which had suffered an hacking attack by the Lulz Boat the day before) was the first to report of three FBI Raids at the New York homes of three suspected members of notorious hacking group Anonymous early Tuesday morning. Later on the same day more details came clear, including the fact that the raids were part of a wider ongoinhg operation involving, to date, more than 35 search warrants issued by FBI (for a total of 75 searches to date), after which sixteen suspected members of Anonymous were arrested in Florida, New Jersey and California (more details in the official FBI press release including the names of the arrested individuals).
The arrested individuals were considered responsable for the DDoS attacks against Visa, Mastercards, PayPal and more, after the companies decided to suspend donations for WikiLeaks.
In the same hours, again according to Fox News, officers from the Metropolitan Police’s E-Crime Unit in London arrested a 16-year-old boy in South London Tuesday afternoon, on suspicion of breaching the Computer Misuse Act. The suspected individual could be Tflow, a key member of the infamous hacker group LulzSec, and he has beeen charged of the Infragard hacking, an affiliate to FBI, on June, the 3rd 2011.
If we exclude the arrest of the alleged Lulzsec member, as I already suggested, probably in many cases the alleged Anonymous members are “Would-be” hacker, recklessly involved in hactivism campaigns on the wave of enthusiasm butwithout the necessary skills. This explains the low average age of the teens purportedly involved. As a confirm I found this interesting post on ReddIt in which a family man tells, triggering the predictable comments from taxpayers, of an FBI in his house with a search warrant (20 agents, guns drawn) because they seemed to believe his 13 year old son was an integral part of the ANON ddos attack on Paypal (I must confess that for an European grown with Sci-Fi U.S. Movies like I am, the imagine of 4 cars and a black van filled with FBI agents invading a common house is priceless). It looks like this is not the only example.
No One has ever been arrested for using LOIC? Not anymore…
Related articles
- No One has ever been arrested for using LOIC (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- FBI searches homes of suspected Anonymous hacktivists in New York (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
Monsanto Hacked: Info of 2,500 employees leaked (Updated)
Update July 14: Database Re-leaked
A couple of hours ago Anonymous re-leaked the info of 2,500 Monsanto employees enriched with further data. The reasons are explained in the following statement:
We previously leaked 2551 emails and names of MonsantoCo employees and associates for the whole internets to see.
Immediately following this, attacks were made attempting to access/change the password on the OpMonsanto Twitter account as well many failed login attempts on 2 corresponding email accounts.
The paypal account used to finance the operation was reported and all assets frozen. Somebody, most certainly, is mad at us![]()
We didn’t appreciate that very much, so we updated the leaked database to include
the previously redacted city/state/country and phone numbers.Operations remain unaffected, this is just the beginning.
In response to some attempts to hack the #OpMonsanto Twitter account, Anonymous decided to disclose further information about the leaked records (Cities and Phone Numbers). The last phrase of the statement sounds particularly threatening: This is just the beginning… And it is further confirmed by a gloomy tweet. A warning for Exxon (#OpExxon) as well, the next alleged target?
Original Post
Few hours after the attack to consulting firm (and military contractor) Booz Allen Hamilton, Anonymous has performed another resounding operation. As part of their #OpMonsanto, the Anonymous have leaked info of 2500 employees belonging to Monsanto, including their home address.
The reasons behind the attacks have been explained with a subsequent tweet:
are an aftermath of the WikiLeaks affair and concern the alleged strategy used by Monsanto to push GMO. Few days ago Anonymous warned Monsanto to expect something “more serious than a DDOS” after the company filed lawsuits against organic farmers for labeling their product as not containing growth hormones. At the end something more serious than a DDOS happened…
Related articles
- Another One Bytes The Dump (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
Another One Bytes The Dump
Update July 12: Booz Allen Confirms Illegal Attack on Information Technology System
It looks like that security issues for US Military contractors never end. The consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton is only the last which has fallen under the blows of anonymous. In the name of the #AntiSec operation hackers claimed today that they compromised a server released internal data, including about 90,000 military e-mail addresses. Due to the huge amount of data leaked, the operation was called #MilitaryMeltdownMonday.
We infiltrated a server on their network that basically had no security measures in place. We were able to run our own application, which turned out to be a shell and began plundering some booty. Most shiny is probably a list of roughly 90,000 military emails and password hashes (md5, non-salted of course!). We also added the complete sqldump, compressed ~50mb, for a good measure.
The entire statement is available on pastebin, while the leaked data have been inserted into a torrent at The Pirate Bay, and are also already available on pastebin, although password are hashed (but not salted).
We also were able to access their svn, grabbing 4gb of source code. But this was deemed insignificant and a waste of valuable space, so we merely grabbed it, and wiped it from their system.
It was clear that something was in the air since a couple of days, as some tweets announced “the biggest day in #anonymous‘ history according to sabu”:
This might be an indication that the ghost of the infamous group LulzSec played a crucial role in the attack to Booz Allen Hamilton. As a matter of fact Sabu, is the alleged leader of the infamous group LulzSec, and also the alleged author of the hack to HBGary Federal, another military contractor hacked earlier this year becouse of its CEO Aaron Barr claimed to have unmasked some Anonymous members. In response to his actions, the hackers dumped 71,000 emails which revealed, among the others things, that HBGary had worked with Booz Allen Hamilton to develop a response plan for Bank of America based on what the bank feared might be an upcoming leak of its internal documents by WikiLeaks.
The Anonymous statement also paints the contractor as another player involved (together with HBGary) on a military project, dubbed Operation Metal Gear by Anonymous (for lack of an official title) designed to manipulate social media, and as a revolving door of military-related conflicts of interest, and argues that the firm has been involved in mass surveillance projects.
The company wrote on its Twitter feed that “as part of @BoozeAllen security policy, we generally do not comment on specific threats or actions taken against our systems.”
This is only the last attack to a U.S. Contractor. On July, the 9th, Anonymous attacked IRC Federal, an FBI contractor, and dumped the content of the attack on a torrent available once again at The Pirate Bay. The dumped content apparently included databases, private emails, contracts, development schematics, and internal documents for various government institutions. The attack was performed as a sequel to the first one against Infragard, another FBI affiliate, on June, the 3rd performed (what a coincidence) from LulzSec.
After HBGary Federal, between April and May 2011 three U.S. Defense contractors: L-3, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman were attacked by using compromised RSA seeds, although in this case no one has been identified as the author of the attacks, and also no connection with anonymous has been found.
Related articles
- Hackers claim they exposed Booz Allen Hamilton data (news.cnet.com)
- 50 Days of Hunt (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)





















