Last Updated on May 24, 2015

It is time for the statistics related to the Cyber Attacks occurred during the first half of January and inserted into the the corresponding timeline.

The Daily Trend of Attacks shows two major peaks, during the 3rd of February (corresponding to the wave of DDoS attacks against Egypt Governmental targets carried on in name of OpEgypt), and just at the end of the month, when the attacks in name of OpKashmir became stronger. A third peak is visible during the 8th and, not a coincidence, it is still due to hacktivism, and in particular to the so-called OpBankUnderAttack.

The Motivations Behind Attacks Chart confirms the trend consolidated in January with Hacktivism still at the top with exactly the same percentage (56%). Cyber Crime Ranks at the second please with one half of the occurrences (28%). It is interesting to notice the Cyber Espionage that has reached its higher value (9%), maybe a consequence of the hype surrounding APT that is characterizing this period. For the first time I also had to insert a new motivation: Art. Frankly I did not find any other way to explain the Democratization of the Offshore Business made by the Italian Artist Paolo Cirio.

SQL Injection keeps on leading the chart related to the Distribution Of Attack Techniques with 31% of occurrences, almost double than DDoS at the second place with 15.6%. It is particularly interesting to notice the presence of Targeted Attacks at the third place, the higher rank ever reached so far. Media hype on the wake of the clamorous attacks of the last days, or a real increased effectiveness of the technologies that allow to detect an increasingly growing number of attacks belonging to this class of threats?

Last but not least, the Distribution of Targets Chart confirms governmental targets at the first place with nearly 30%, immediately followed by, as usual, industries (18.8%) and organizations (12.5%). In any case the level of attention of crooks is also high against targets belonging to the Financial and News sector, which steadily rank respectively at number 4 and 5 of this unwelcome chart with the 10.9% and 9.4%. The others follow….

As usual, no need to remind that the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks included in the 1-15 February 2013 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, 2012 and now 2013 (regularly updated). You may also want to have a look 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).