Last Updated on February 21, 2018
It’s time for the second timeline of January 2018, covering the main cyber attacks occurred between January 16 and January 31 (first timeline here), a timeline that, as you will immediately notice, is unsurprisingly long.
The new gold rush (the crypto currency frenzy) confirms to be one of the main drivers for this interesting beginning of 2018. This fortnight we have experienced the largest theft of digital coins (so far). The unfortunate protagonist of this event is Coincheck, a Japanese exchange that suffered a staggering $524 million worth loss as the consequence of a cyber attack.
Scams (not necessarily during Initial Coin Offerings) have been another appealing event for digital crooks during this fortnight, and we had three examples: the user of IOTA (an open-source distributed ledger for IoT applications, $4M worth losses), the participants to the ICO of the Bee Token Crypto Currency ($1M worth losses) and finally the ones to the ICO of Experty (“only” $150,000 worth losses). The constantly growing occurrence of similar events has suggested me to add the “fintech” category into the classification taxonomy.
And BTW, the list of attacks involved miners is really too long to enumerate, so I really suggest you to read the whole timeline.
Regarding Cyber Espionage, some interesting events include the discovery of Dark Caracal, a massive long lasting campaign carried on by actors purportedly tied to the Lebanese government, and the discovery of SkyGoFree, a surveillance malware with Italian roots, reminiscent of the Hacking Team creations.
Cyber Criminals were particularly active in the US with an unprecedented Jackpotting campaign against local ATMs, but I would also mention a novel malware targeting electronic pump stations in Russia, with the intention to force users to pay more for fuel.
Instead the winds of cyber war were particularly strong in the Netherlands, where the main local banks and a couple of governmental entities were hit by an intense wave of DDoS attacks, a possible retaliation after reports emerged according to which the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD allegedly spied on Russia-linked hacker group Cozy Bear, also known as APT29, as early as 2014).
But this fortnight the list is really too long, so I repeat my advice to browse it all.
In any case, 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, 2014, 2015, 2016 , and 2017 (regularly updated). You may also want to have a look at the Cyber Attack Statistics that are regularly published, and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Additionally, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts). If useful, you can access the timeline in Google Sheet format.
Additionally, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts). If useful, you can access the timeline in Google Sheet format.
