1-15 January 2019 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Let’s start this 2019 with the first timeline of January, covering the main cyber attacks in the first fortnight of this month: I have collected a total of 47 events, substantially in line with the 49 collected in the last timeline of December.

The prize for the first (but for sure not the last) mega breach of 2019 goes to Blank Media Games, whose browser-based game “Town of Salem” has suffered the compromise of 7.6 million users.

In terms of economic damage, the Italian company Tecnimont SPA, is undoubtedly the main victim of this fortnight: Chinese hackers have defrauded the Indian subsidiary, stealing the equivalent of $18.6 million.

And the new year hasn’t started any better for the crypto sector: Cryptopia is the first exchange to be breached, with the equivalent of $1.2 million transferred to an unknown address, while “a deep chain reorganization” of the Ethereum Classic blockchain leads to the “double spending” (read theft) of the equivalent $1.1 million.

Last but not least, it turned out that the state-sponsored actors of the Lazarus Group where behind the recent intrusion suffered by Chilean interbank network Redbanc.

But the list is too long to be summarized in a few lines, so feel free to browse entire timeline to have an idea of the threat landscape. Feel free to share it and don’t forget to follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.