Last Updated on May 24, 2015

From an information security perspective, November has been a month with two faces. The first part of the month has been characterized by hacktivism, nevertheless the Cyber Crime has reached an unprecedented level with the 69% of occurrences.

Let us begin with the Daily Trend chart. This chart confirms the influence of cyber attacks motivated by hacktivism in the first half of the month that explain the peak around the 5th of November.

Daily Trend Nov 2012

Despite the peak of attacks motivated by hacktivism occurred in the first half of the November, the Motivations Behind Attacks chart confirms the predominance of Cyber Crime with nearly the 69% of occurrences, followed by Hacktivism with the 28%. This growing trend of Cyber Crime is in line with the previous months even if the frequency has reached an unprecedented value (the higher so far).

Motivations Nov 2012

Also in November, the Distribution Of Attack Techniques Chart confirms the predominance of SQL Injection. Nearly one attack on two has been carried on with this technique. It is also interesting to notice the presence of DNS Poisoning: November has brought three attacks executed with this method.

Techniques Nov 2012

The Distribution Of Targets chart shows the preference of cyber-crooks for targets belonging to the Industry sector. Even if the difference with governmental targets is only one point (19% against 18%), this is in contrast with the previous month where the ranks were exactly opposed (governmental targets led the chart with the 31%). Educational targets are “stable” at the 11% (were the 13% during the previous month). Curiously this month has registered a peak of attacks against Torrent sites.

Targets Nov 2012

As usual, no need to remind that the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks included in the November Cyber Attacks Timeline (the so-called tip of the iceberg), and hence it does not pretend to be exhaustive but only aims to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape”.

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), at the Cyber Attack Statistics, 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).

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Emilia Raw

    OMG! I know Cybercrime was in raise but THIS is scarry! My nephew was a victim of a webcam blackmail. Since that we’re using the website scanandtrust.com. I don’t know if you ever heard of it? They help you prevent from scams of all sort.
    You do a scan and they tell you if you’re facing a scam.
    What I like is that they’re not only telling you yes/ No it’s a scam. They give you personnalized advice.
    Just so you know…

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