It's time to publish the second timeline of September. This timeline confirms the trend of the latest months with 101 events (including 4 occurred outside the considered interval). Needless to say, ransomware continued to dominate...
The first half of November 2012 has been undoubtedly characterized by Hacktivism. Not only the month has begun with the ProjectBlackStar by the infamous Team Ghostshell (2.5 million accounts leaked belonging to different Russian sectors), but also the long-awaited November 5 has brought an unprecedented wave of Cyber Attacks against organizations all over the world, including Symantec and the UK Ministry Of Defence (more than 3,000 accounts leaked in both cases).
Moreover, after the dramatic event of the 14th of November (the killing of Ahmed Al-Jaabari, the commander of the military wing of Hamas by an Israeli missile and the consequent Operation “Pillar Of Defense”), the Anonymous have started a massive campaign of Cyber Attacks against Israel sites and in support of Palestine. This campaign is still ongoing even if it is really impossible to track all the attacks (nearly 700 defaced web sites so far), and hence, as far as possible, only a general overview is provided.
Of course these events have shadowed the other attacks, including the ones to LG (3,300 accounts leaked in two different cyber attacks) and Adobe (150,000 records allegedly compromised).
The chronicles also report of an alleged cyber attack against Telecom Italia (30,000 accounts allegedly leaked), even if there several doubts about the real authenticity of this attack.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), 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).
So unfortunately the Summer is nearly gone, but, despite the sadness for the beautiful season fading away, here we are with the usual analysis of what’s happened in September from a Security Information perspective.
The main event for the first half of September is the massive attack against Vodafone Germany, potentially compromising more than 2 million customer records. Actually it was very hard to declare a main event, since even Belgacom performed was on the infosec news, unleashing some information related to a targeted attack, it was victim of. Always on the Cyber Crime front, it’s also worth to mention the failed (luckily) attack against Santander.
Nothing new under the Hacktivism front, that offered a minor revamp of the Syrian Electronic Army, despite the claims of them being dox’ed, some events in Turkey, where the cyber temperature remains hot despite the Summer fading away, and again some small attacks related to Syria and the NSA affair.
As usual, if you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011, 2012 and now 2013 (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).
Two Weeks Living Dangerously! I have no other words to describe this second half of January (first two weeks here) that has shown an unprecedented level of attacks! And if a good day starts with the morning, this will be a very troubled year from an information security perspective.
Not only the peaks of DDoS attacks against the US Banks have reached an unstoppable peak, but, most of all, at the end of the month details have been unveiled about a massive cyber-espionage campaign allegedly orchestrated by Chinese hackers against some major US media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Bloomberg News.
A very very long list of targets this month, with some high profile victims such as the U.S. Sentencing Commission, whose web site has been hacked twice and turned into an Asteroid game, but also Renault Argentina that suffered 37,000 accounts leaked.
To summarize this month is really impossible, you just have to scroll down the timeline to realize the hacking spree in this January 2013.
If this trend continues, I will have to decrease the frequency of publication…
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 and the related statistics (regularly updated), 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). To do so, you can use this form.
Click here for part 1.
The second half of January is gone, and it is undoubtely clear that this month has been characterized by hacktivism and will be remembered for the Mega Upload shutdown. Its direct and indirect aftermaths led to an unprecedented wave of cyber attacks in terms of LOIC-Based DDoS (with a brand new self service approach we will need to get used to), defacements and more hacking initiatives against several Governments and the EU Parliament, all perpetrated under the common umbrella of the opposition to SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. These attacks overshadowed another important Cyber Event: the Middle East Cyberwar (which for the sake of clarity deserved a dedicated series of posts, here Part I and Part II) and several other major breaches (above all Dreamhost and New York State Electric & Gas and Rochester Gas & Electric).
Chronicles also reports a cyber attack to railways, several cyber attacks to universities, a preferred target, and also of a bank robbery in South Africa which allowed the attackers to steal $6.7 million.
Do you think that cyber attacks in this month crossed the line and the Cyber Chessboard will not be the same anymore? It may be, meanwhile do not forget to follow @paulsparrows to get the latest timelines and feel free to support and improve my work with suggeastions and other meaningful events I eventually forgot to mention.
Looks like Israel has approached a “wait and see” strategy, as these last days of cyber war have seen almost exclusively actions against that country without any appreciable response. In a certain sense, most of all at the Israeli site, the cyber conflict seems to have fallen into a rest, even if new actors have entered the scene, as is the case of the Mauritania Hacker Team, who opened with the leak of 2500 Israeli emails and claimed to have hacked the Central Bank of Israel. Despite these events the number and intensity of the attacks is no longer that of the early days.
The frequency of the attacks has drastically fallen, even because the early cyber fighters seem to have disappeared, apart from the AlienZ who, every now and then reappear with some dumps against arab sites (and not only).
In the meantime, Iran is suffering several sparse attacks from the Anonymous, targeting that country in the name of #OpIran, and in contemporary attacks its Azerbaijani neighbors considered close to Israel.
Interesting to notice I also found evidence of internal attacks in Iran against reformist websites considered close to former President Mohammad Khatami. The storyboard follows the same line both in real and virtual world.
Apparently Israel seems not to respond to attacks. A temporary truce or a real turnaround?
(At this link you can find the complete Middle East Cyber War Update and follows @paulsparrows for the latest updates.)
I know, I am a little late this month. We have just entered May and I was able to publish the first part of the Timeline of April. I will try to maintain the usual rhythm and to be more punctual for the next releases.
Anyway, the first part of April has offered many interesting port with several large scale attacks and massive breaches. The first category includes the Darkleech malware against Apache, and the gigantic brute-force attack against WordPress. The second category includes the attacks against two primary Japanese portals, the FPS War Z, Scribd, Linode, and, most of all Schnucks Markets, targeting potentially 2.4 million users.
But not only Cyber Crime in this month, even the hacktivists were quite active with their OpIsrael 2 (and its controversial damage report), the wake of attacks against North Korean web sites, and even the sixth week of DDoS attacks against the U.S. Banks carried on under the so-called Operation Ababil.
Hard times for System Administrators!
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011, 2012 and now 2013 (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).
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I do not know if being happy or not, but it looks like the second half of June (the first timeline covering 1-15 June is here) has seen a sharp inversion of the decreasing trend recorded on the last few months. I have registered an increase of the number of attacks with particular focus on targeted attacks.
The cyber crime front offered several noticeable events, targeting, just to mention the most devastating cases: AT&T, Evernote, the State of Montana (1.3 million single individuals potentially affected), and Butler University.
Moving to hacktivism, the cyber temperature is still high in Brazil, where the hacktivists concentrated their unwelcome attentions. Other points of interest involve Pakistan, and US.
Last but not least, this period recorded an unusual number of targeted attacks spotted in the news. The list includes (but is not limited to): the British Government Secure Intranet, an US Hedge Fund, Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, ICS vendors in US and Europe and a Government Agency in Taiwan.
As usual, if you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are 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).
This month of August will be probably remembered for the massive cache of 1.2 million of password scooped up by the Russian gang Cyber Vor, undoubtedly the most important event that overshadowed all the other activity recorded in these dog days.
Besides this remarkable fact, the Cyber Crime chronicles report, among others, an unprecedented attack technique, aimed to hijack ISP traffic to steal bitcoins, the breach to SuperValu, and the compromising of 60,000 staffers who participated in Tennessee health screening program.
Cyber Espionage is still in the spotlight, with the breach to USIS (United States Investigation Services), the discovery of the Turla campaign, and also of a similar campaign targeted specifically to Ukraine.
Turning the attention to hacktivism: Ukraine, Israel and the US (following the events of St. Louis) have been the hottest frontlines, even if the most important event is perhaps the attack against Gamma International, the company behind of the infamous FinFinsher spyware.
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).
It’s time for the second timeline of October (Part I here) covering the main cyber attacks between the 16th and 31st: yet another consistent list confirming the growing trend of the last period.
In particular, in these two weeks the most important events have been spotted inside Cyber Espionage, whose chronicles report, among other, a state-sponsored attack to an unclassified network of the White House, a relevant number of operations (APT 28, Operation Pawn Storm, Operation SMN, Operation DeathClick, a tail of the infamous Sandworm), and even a man-in-the-middle attack against Chinese iCloud users.
Cybercrime is also on a roll: the trail of attacks against retailers seems unstoppable (Staples is the latest victim), but chronicles also report a massive breach in South Korea, involving Pandora TV and a gigantic SQL Injection attack, driven by CVE-2014-3704, against every unpatched website running Drupal, existing on this desperate planet. There is also space for a little bit of irony, as in case of Sourcebooks, the publisher hacked few days before releasing the latest book of Brian Krebs.
Israel and Ukraine keep on being two hot fronts for Hacktivism, whereas India is again the cradle of cyberwar, many events event in this months (despite limited to skirmishes involving defacements of governmental and military websites).
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).
