Last Updated on May 24, 2015

It is time to summarize the timelines of March (part I and part II) into statistics. Of course this exercise does not aim to be exhaustive but only to provide a snapshot of the current landscape.

The Daily Trend chart shows a decrease of the attacks in the second part of the month with an isolated peak on the 20th: the day of the wiper attack in Korea. Except for this the trend is clearly decreasing

March 2013 Daily Trend

Hacktivism is still on top of the Motivations Behind Attacks chart with 50% of occurrences. Same rank and a value similar to the previous month when it was at 56%. Also March confirms that Cyber Espionage campaigns are becoming more and more frequent (or at least deserve an important coverage on the chronicles). Symptom of a growing attention or simply a media hype?

March 2013 Motivations

The Distribution Of Attack Techniques is influenced by the Operation Ababil against U.S. Banks, that has pushed the DDoS at number one with nearly one attack above two during this month. This is very different from the previous month when SQLi led the chart with 34%. Even in this case it is important to notice the growing presence of targeted attacks on the chart (strictly related to the growing coverage of Cyber Espionage campaigns).

March 2013 Attacks

Last, but not least, the Distribution of Targets chart shows the financial targets at number one with nearly 30% (a clear influence of the attacks against U.S. Banks). Governmental targets are immediately behind with 25.5%. At number three a (relatively) new entry: target belonging to the news sector gain the bronze medal with the 12.4% of occurrences.

March 2013 Targets

As usual, as I told before, no need to remind that the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks included in my timelines. The sample 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).

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