16-30 November 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It is time for the report of the cyber landscape of the second half of November.

This month will be probably remembered for the discovery of the giant breach targeting Cupid Media and involving potentially 42 million users. However, this was not the only remarkable breach of November: chronicles report of 77,000 customers of Vodafone Island having their details leaked.

Other interesting events involve a brute-force attack to GitHub, forcing several users to change password, and yet another attack against a Bitcoin Wallet (the equivalent of $1 million stole).

Not only Cyber Criminals. Even Hacktivists were particularly active in this period: the attacks of Indonesian hackers against Australian targets continued in the second part of November, as also the mutual defacements between Pakistani and Indian crews. Last but not least, the Anonymous leaked some documents and emails allegedly belonging to the Italian Governor of Lombardy and the details of 40,000 individuals from an Israeli Job search portal.

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).16-30-november-2013-cyber-attacks-timeline

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16-30 September 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It’s time for analyzing the main cyber Attacks happened in September.

From an information security perspective, the second half of September has been characterized by the discovery of three operations related to targeted attacks against different countries and sectors. Two in particular, DeputyDog and IceFrog, targeting have a common denominator: Japan.

In the same period. despite the numerous members brought to court, the Anonymous have continued their operations all over the World (Cambodia and New Zealand have been the hottest fronts).

Considering Cyber Crime, this month has raised the attention to the risks posed by fake KVM switches. With a similar device, a gang of cyber-thieves was able to steal £1.3 M from a Barclays Computer. Unfortunately for them this magic box was not able to avoid them to get busted (in any case they deserved a mention in the timeline). For sure you will remember that a similar cyber-plot has also been tried against Santander.

On the cyber warfare front, the temperature of the virtual battlefield among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh remains quite hot. On the other side of the World, US officials have unveiled an escalation of cyber attacks from Iran. Curiously this admission was done few days before Mojtaba Ahmad, the head of Iran’s cyber warfare programme, has been shot dead (although Iranian officials are denying similar claims).

Last but not least the Belgium Government has admitted to have been the victim of a targeted attack. Unfortunately, in this case the suspects are directed to NSA!

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.16-30-september-2013-cyber-attacks-timeline

Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).

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1-15 October 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It’s time to review the list of the main cyber attacks happened during the first half of October.

Of course there are few doubts: the breach involving Adobe (compromising the details of 3 million customers and the source code of two products) is for sure the most remarkable event of the month (and probably of the year), and its consequences will likely affect the Infosec landscape for long. In addition it overshadowed all the other events occurred so it is quite hard to summarize the threat landscape of the first 15 days of October.

In a nutshell, these two weeks have brought an unprecedented number of DNS Hijackings and several considerable breaches (however not comparable in size and impact with the one affecting Adobe). At first glance, looks like the number of attacks motivated by Cyber Crime is constantly increasing and leaving behind Hacktivism.

Last but not least, curiously, for this couple of weeks, I did not find any remarkable operations motivated by Cyber Espionage.

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).

1-15 October 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

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16-31 July 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

July is gone and hence it’s time, as usual, to summarize the main cyber events happened in the second half of this month (Part I here).

For a strange coincidence this month has shown an unusual number of breaches dating back to several years ago (2010-2012) and reported only now: Catch of The Day, Think W3 Limited, Paddy Power and Lasko are the organizations affected.

Looking quickly at Cyber Crime, these two weeks have brought the breach to The Wall Street Journal (by W0rm the same author of the breach to CNET), the disclosure of a failed attempt to disrupt the Nasdaq in 2010, a breach to the website of the European Central Bank, an extensive attack aimed to compromise the Tor Infrastructure, and, last bunt not least, the DHS advisory related to Backokff, a PoS Malware already compromising 600 organizations throughout the U.S.

Moving to Cyber Espionage, this period will be remembered for the Canadian allegations against China, related to a cyber attack against The National Research Council and the possible compromising three Israeli defense contractors responsible for building the “Iron Dome” missile shield program.

Israel was even under the radar of the Hacktivists, who concentrated there their efforts in support of the #OpSaveGaza operation.

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).

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16-31 October 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

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).

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1-15 November 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It’s time for the summary of the main cyber attacks occurred in the first half of November and reported on the news.

These fifteen days have been particularly troubled from an information security perspective, having left to the records several remarkable breaches: LoyaltyBuild, affecting potentially 1.12 million individuals, CorporateCarOnline.com (850,000 individuals), MacRumors (850,000 individuals) and, last but not least, vBulletin (860,000 users affected). A damage report which appears really devastating.

But even hacktivists have been particularly active: several operations have been carried on by the Anonymous all over the world (Italy, UK, Singapore, Japan, Philippines and Ukraine). One in particular (by Indonesian hacktivists against Australian targets) has apparently created a fracture inside the collective.

Last but not least, the chronicles report the latest hack of the Syrian Electronic Army against VICE and a new wave of attacks of Pakistani hackers against Indian targets.

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).1-15 November 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

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