Last Updated on May 24, 2015

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).

  1. http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-to-suffer-prolonged-downtime-after-ddos-attack-120727/
  2. http://datalossdb.org/incidents/7202-506-email-addresses-and-passwords-dumped-on-the-internet
  3. http://ozdc.net/archives.php?aid=2870
  4. http://datalossdb.org/incidents/7182-213-email-addresses-with-18-names-user-names-and-passwords-dumped-on-the-internet
  5. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Pearl-fr-Hacked-by-L0lzSec-700-000-Accounts-Possibly-Compromised-284722.shtml
  6. http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2012/08/02/epa-security-breach-exposes-personal.html
  7. http://www.cyberwarnews.info/2012/08/02/australian-fishing-trade-association-afta-hacked-900-accounts-leaked-by-doktorbass/
  8. http://deadspin.com/5931360/new-york-yankees-facebook-page-announces-derek-jeter-to-miss-rest-of-season-due-to-sex-change
  9. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/08/reuters-blogs-hacked-fake-story-about-syrian-rebels/55394/#
  10. www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/
  11. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57486971-93/reuters-twitter-account-hijacked-fake-tweets-sent/
  12. http://www.zdnet.com/gizmodos-twitter-account-hacked-7000002130/
  13. http://ozdc.net/archives.php?aid=2869
  14. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Site-of-India-s-Minister-of-Communications-and-IT-Hacked-by-Anonymous-285097.shtml
  15. http://news.softpedia.com/news/PBBans-Relocates-Servers-After-Being-Hit-by-DDOS-Attack-285353.shtml
  16. http://ozdc.net/archives.php?aid=2872
  17. http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/anonymous-attacks-ukrainian-government-websites-and-threatens-with-further-action-311234.html
  18. http://news.softpedia.com/news/WikiLeaks-Taken-Down-by-DDOS-Attack-AntiLeaks-Takes-Credit-285771.shtml
  19. http://www.newschief.com/article/20120807/NEWS/208075028/-1/opinion?Title=Website-hacked-staff-working-to-get-it-back-up&tc=ar
  20. https://twitter.com/Cabledrummer/status/233030298240155649
  21. http://www.cyberwarnews.info/2012/08/08/australian-institute-of-business-brokers-hacked-for-opaustralia/
  22. http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/433131/australian_institute_business_brokers_denies_anonymous_password_breach/
  23. http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=5349
  24. http://www.cyberwarnews.info/2012/08/08/dsd-asio-websites-attacked-by-anonymous-for-opaustralia/
  25. http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193767/Gauss_Nation_state_cyber_surveillance_meets_banking_Trojan
  26. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/blizzard-battle-net-gets-hacked-says-members-change-220027322.html
  27. http://community.websense.com/blogs/securitylabs/archive/2012/08/08/nepalese-government-websites-compromised-to-serve-zegost-backdoor.aspx
  28. http://news.softpedia.com/news/OpDemonoid-Ukrainian-Ministry-of-Defense-Site-Taken-Down-by-Anonymous-285933.shtml
  29. http://rt.com/usa/news/utah-road-hackers-sign-389/
  30. http://news.softpedia.com/news/HP-Training-Center-Defaced-by-Hitcher-in-Protest-Against-Israel-286278.shtmlx
  31. http://www.cyberwarnews.info/2012/08/13/torrent-site-scanbits-org-hacked-9000-accounts-leaked/
  32. http://cylaw.info/?p=1087
  33. http://www.cyberwarnews.info/2012/08/15/uganda-government-under-attack-by-anonymous-for-anti-lgbt/
  34. http://news.softpedia.com/news/RUTracker-Hacked-Displays-Domain-Seized-by-ICE-Message-286486.shtml
  35. http://www.trusteer.com/blog/citadel-trojan-targets-airport-employees-with-vpn-attack
  36. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/260940/atandt_hit_by_ddos_attack_suffers_dns_outage.html
  37. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/net-us-hacking-reuters-saudi-idUSBRE87E0HU20120815
  38. http://hackmageddon.com/2012/08/16/another-massive-cyber-attack-in-middle-east/
  39. http://hackmageddon.com/2012/08/17/heres-shamoon/

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Monica Do Coutto Monni

    And how about Brazil? What is the situation of cyber attacks there? I’d like to know more.

    1. Paolo Passeri

      Hi Monica, I try to track the Cyber Attacks all over the world. The fact that you do not find events happening in Brazil in this timeline, means that no meaningful cyber attacks have been detected there in the considered period (at least according to my parameters and the sources I typically consult). In the past months there have been several events targeting Brazil, most of all related to Hacktivism. Try to make a search in the timelines (http://hackmageddon.com/?s=Brazil) and you will find them. Of course if you have more data, feel free to make suggestions and integrations.
      Regards.

      Paolo.

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