In terms of mega breaches, the new year did not start well with some remarkable leaks targeting Cross Switch (3.6 million records), Hathway (4 million) and the Jakarta Provincial Government (6.8 million).

And the new year could not start worse for the fintech sector, especially for Orbit Chain, which experiences a security breach resulting in a loss of $86 million in cryptocurrency. But as I mentioned earlier, individuals operating in the crypto space were the targets of multiple scams carried out compromising high profile accounts on social media, especially X.

In terms of cyber espionage, threat actors, primarily from China, were quite busy in exploiting the two Ivanti vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887), other active groups include: UAC-0050, targeting organizations in Ukraine), the North Korean TA444, and the Turkish Sea Turtle, targeting ISPs in The Netherlands.

In terms of hacktivism, the complicated situation in Ukraine and Gaza continued to influence the threat landscape, with several DDoS campaigns carried out by the pro-Russia groups NoName057(16) and Anonymous Sudan, an attack launched by pro-Ukraine hacktivists from the ‘Blackjack’ group against a Russian ISP (M9com), and for the middle east, the hack of flight information display screens at Beirut’s international airport to display politically motivated messages.

I will publish the next timeline more quickly, but for the moment my suggestion is always the same: browse the timeline, and obviously share it to support my work in spreading the risk awareness across the community. And don’t forget to follow @paulsparrows on X (formerly Twitter,) or even connect on Linkedin, or Mastodon for the latest updates.