1-15 November 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

The first half of November is gone, so it’s time for the list of the main cyber attacks occurred during these fifteen days.

Confirming the trend of the last months, the activity has been quite sustained. For sure, the most remarkable attack has targeted the Turkish branch of HSBC, and has affected 2.7 million customers, whose credit cards have been compromised (and apparently the bank has decided not to issue new cards for the impacted users).

Again the operations related to cyber espionage have played an important role: some new campaigns have come to light (for instance Darkhotel), and also several noticeable attacks have been discovered, like the one against the United States Postal Service (600,000 users affected) or the one against the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Even hacktivists have been quite active: the RedHack collective has reemerged from several months in stealth mode (they claim to have deleted 650,000 USD worth 0f electricity power debt), and some hackers claiming to be affiliated to the Anonymous collective have performed similar operations in Italy (in parallel with the delicate social and economical period) and the Philippines.

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).1-15-november-2014-cyber-attacks-timeline

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16-30 September 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

And finally we can complete the September 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I here), with the second part covering the most important events between the 16th and the 30th.

A very fruitful month for Cyber Criminals, since there are several events that will be remembered. For sure the Shellshock vulnerability will spoil the troubled sleeps of many System Administrators. In any case this is not the only remarkable event, the chronicles report of an (un)expected tail of the Celebrity Leak scandal (the so-called Fappening), with other two rounds of leaked pictures occurred on the 20th and the 26th, and a couple of massive breaches against TripAdvisor subsidiary Viator (1.4 million users affected) and Japan Airlines (750,000 users affected). Last but not least, it is also worthwhile to mention the group of teen hackers charged for hacking into Microsoft, the US Army and several game companies, stealing $100 million in Intellectual Property, and the so-called Operation Harkonnen, the longest cyber crime campaign ever.

Regarding the Cyber Espionage, the timeline reports the discovery of yet another Chinese Operation against US contractors, and a coordinated state-sponsored mobile malware aimed to intercept protesters in Hong Kong.

At least for once… Nothing particular interesting for Hacktivism…

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).16-30-september-2014-cyber-attacks-timeline

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16-30 June 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It’s time for the second part of the June 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline (first part here).

The last two weeks of June have been characterized by an unusual cyber activity in the Korean Peninsula. In a dramatic escalation of events (coinciding with the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War), both countries have attracted the unwelcome attentions of hacktivists and (alleged) state-sponsored groups, being targeted by a massive wave of Cyber attacks, with the South suffering the worst consequences (a huge amount of records subtracted by the attackers).

On the hacktivism front, the most remarkable events involved some actions in Brazil and Africa, and the trail of attacks in Turkey that even characterized the first half of the month. The chronicles of the month also report an unsuccessful operation: the results of the so-called OpPetrol have been negligible (most of all in comparison to the huge expectations) with few nuisance-level attacks.

On the cyber crime front, the most remarkable events involved the attacks against Blizzard, that forced the company to temporarily close mobile access to its auction service, a serious breach against a Samsung service in Kazakhstan, a targeted attack against the internal network of Opera Software (aimed to steal code signing certificates) and several attacks to some DNS registrars. In particular the most serious has been perpetrated against Network Solutions, affecting nearly 5000 domains, among which LinkedIn.

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).

16-31 June 2013 Cyber Atacks Timeline (more…)

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