16-31 December 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Last Updated on May 24, 2015

Let’s give the welcome to this new infosec year with the first timeline of 2014 (or better the last of 2013) summarizing the main events occurred in the second half of December 2013.

With no doubt, this holiday season has been characterized by the Target breach, whose size is constantly growing (110 million the number of potential victims according to recent estimates). This massive incident has somehow shadowed another massive breached occurred in Turkey, were Russian hackers have allegedly been able to obtain 54 million citizens’ ID Data. With similar numbers, the 300.000 users potentially affected by the Cyber Attack involving Affinity Gaming appear risible.

Other considerable events include a Christmas Intrusion on a BBC server (with the author possibly selling the backdoor access on the underground) and yet another possible intrusion by Chinese hackers on a US target, specifically the Federal Election Commission.

Nothing particularly significant on the hacktivism front characterized by the consolidated “background noise” of events whose sizes are well far from the levels of the recent years.

As usual, 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).