Last Updated on October 2, 2011

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:

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.


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.

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

  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

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

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.


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
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Hana SK

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)


Account Hacking
Sep 26
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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.


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.


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