Last Updated on May 23, 2015
Despite still related to December 2014, here is the first timeline for 2015 covering the main events occurred between the 16th and 31st December 2014 (first part here).
No doubt, this Christmas will be remembered for the unwelcome surprise of the DDoS attack performed by the infamous Lizard Squad against the online services of Sony and Microsoft. An attack that has shattered the dreams of many players, just few minutes after unwrapping their brand new consoles under the Christmas Tree. However, the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and inevitably two members of the collective have allegedly been arrested (not before having attempted a Sybil Attack against Tor).
But the latter was not the only attack targeting the Tor anonymity service in this period, which also suffered an unexplained outage affecting a cluster of Tor Directory Authority Servers in a Rotterdam data center.
Other noticeable events concern the outage of the Internet connection in North Korea (despite it is not completely clear if caused by a cyber attack or a fault), a malware detected in a South Korea power plant, the attacks targeting the ICANN and the ISC Consortium, two among the most important organizations for the Internet, and (yet another) breach targeting NVIDIA.
Moving to a different topic, all in all the hacktivists decided to enjoy the Christmas vacations with the exception of the Syrian Electronic Army who were back, and defaced an online magazine, the International Business Time, for an article against the Syrian regime.
Last but not least, with regard to Cyber Espionage, there have been two operations discovered in this period: an alleged attack perpetrated by Chinese hackers against an Afghan CDN targeting directly many local governmental sites, and indirectly many foreign institutions, and also the discovery of the Anunak group, a well-organized crew able to steal USD $25 Million with a long lasting cyber espionage operation against targets in Europe and the US.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our electronic identity is inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011, 2012, 2013 and now 2014 (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).
- https://www.facebook.com/AnonSecHackers.us/posts/785001791571949
- https://twitter.com/Apex_Haxor/status/544506938470711298
- http://www.zdnet.com/article/icann-falls-for-spear-phishing-attack/
- http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/banks-park-n-fly-online-card-breach/
- http://www.ibtimes.com/syrian-electronic-army-hacks-international-business-times-website-1762097
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/davelewis/2014/12/29/nvidia-corporate-network-breached/
- http://pastebin.com/HX7AvUyf
- http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4e15d27639e44781a3024c3b1db7c1e2/2nd-security-clearance-investigation-contractor-hacked
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-17/chinese-criminals-blamed-for-record-japan-bank-cybertheft.html
- http://www.databreaches.net/id-parts-notifies-12000-customers-of-payment-card-breach/
- http://www.databreaches.net/va-security-incident-involving-james-madison-university-network/
- http://www.databreaches.net/police-investigate-student-data-breach-at-south-western-high-school/
- http://hackread.com/uni-of-toronto-hacked-with-anti-isis-message/
- http://hackread.com/online-transaction-company-payza-blog-hacked-pakistani-hackers/
- http://pastebin.com/HZrLfFm0
- http://www.databreaches.net/presidian-hotels-resorts-releases-information-about-data-breach-investigation/
- http://onelincoln.net/payment-card-notice/
- http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/cluster-of-tor-servers-taken-down-in-unexplained-outage/
- http://news.softpedia.com/news/MileagePlus-Accounts-of-United-Airlines-Frequent-Flyers-Accessed-By-Unauthorized-Party-468673.shtml
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/23/china_fingered_for_afghan_govt_attacks/
- http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/madonna-turns-to-the-sneakernet-after-album-leak/
- http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=17781
- http://www.cnet.com/news/north-korea-said-to-blame-us-for-internet-shutdown/
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/26/isc_org_hacked/
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/24/rackspace_restored_after_ddos_takes_out_dns/
- http://hackread.com/ieee-org-domains-hacked-by-pro-palestinian-hacker/
- http://www.databreaches.net/dutchwear-notifies-online-customers-of-payment-card-breach/
- http://rt.com/news/217211-gchq-website-down-hackers/
- https://twitter.com/Official_AnonG/status/547796181695627264
- http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/grinches-steal-christmas-for-xbox-live-playstation-network-users/
- http://www.zdnet.com/article/130k-users-data-leaked-via-chinas-train-ticketing-site/
- http://pastebin.com/w32pTm92
- http://datalossdb.org/incidents/14533-168-962-user-accounts-with-email-addresses-and-clear-text-passwords-dumped-on-the-internet
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/27/tor_lizard_squad_sybil_attack/
- http://www.databreaches.net/lokai-holdings-notifies-customers-of-payment-card-breach/
- http://hackread.com/sub-domain-of-ec-council-website-defaced/
- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lyXaGOe44rMJ:pastebin.com/nAvYjRu2+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=en
- http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/30/us-nuclear-southkorea-cybersecurity-idUSKBN0K80J620141230
- http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/target-hackers-hit-onestopparking-com/
- http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/banks-card-breach-at-some-chick-fil-as/
- http://hackread.com/iranian-copy-of-facebook-facenama-hacked/
