Last Updated on September 23, 2020

Here’s the first timeline of July! This fortnight I have collected 89 events (including 6 that occurred in the previous month), a number in line with the previous timeline (84 events) that confirms a certain stabilization of the trend after the peaks of the first quarter, likely due to the impact of COVID-themed attack. An impact that is now decreasing as the world faces the “new normal”.

Apparently, only 2 events out of the 83 collected in July are somehow related to the pandemic. In contrast, ransomware continues to characterize the cyber threat landscape, capitalizing 17 events out of 83 (more than 20%). Interestingly, threat actors are developing other forms of ransoms, such the one seen in this period where an attacker left a ransom note on nearly 23,000 MongoDB databases left exposed without a password.

And even the season of the mega breaches is not over yet: 45 million travelers to Thailand and Malaysia had their personal details leaked in the dark web, the same fate that occurred to the customers of an undisclosed UK ticketing provider. And of course these are not the only entities that suffered mega breaches. Scroll down the timeline and you will discover more.

As usual, the Cyber Espionage front has some interesting campaigns, such as the ones carried out by Mustang Panda, RATicate, BadPatch, and a Chinese entity targeting the Uyghur ethnic minority.

There are also two interesting events related to Cyber Warfare: an alleged cyber attack against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz carried out by a group of dissidents calling themselves the Homeland Cheetahs, and also the revelations that the CIA conducted a series of covert cyber operations against Iran and other targets, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

Last but not least, even the hacktivists are back, with particular focus on the aviation sector in Italy and the European Space Agency (ESA).

But let’s stop talking: the details of each event are in the timeline, feel free to share it to support my work and spread the risk awareness across the community. And don’t forget to follow @paulsparrows on Twitter, or even connect on Linkedin, for the latest updates.

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