Comerica

16-31 January 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 29, 2015
Post category:Cyber Attacks Timeline Security
Post comments:1 Comment
Reading time:5 mins read
Post published:February 7, 2013

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.

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The Quassam Group Stops the Cyber Attacks Against US Banks

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 24, 2015
Post category:Cyberwar Security
Post comments:1 Comment
Reading time:3 mins read
Post published:January 30, 2013

Finally it looks like the DDoS attacks against US Banks, carried on by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters in name of the infamous Operation Ababil, have been temporarily suspended. The decision is a consequence of the removal of the controversial video “The innocence of Muslim” from Youtube.

Actually only one copy has been removed (the one which collected more views) and a dozen of copies are still available to visitors. Nevertheless the hacktivists have appreciated this action and have consequently suspended the cyber attacks.

The sudden stop came in the moment of maximum peak: in the last two weeks the wave of DDoS has reached an unprecedented level, with 35 attacks against 25 banks. An apparently unstoppable storm that has dramatically shown the fragility of the system. Here the details of the banks impacted (of course you will find them in the forthcoming Cyber Attack Timeline.

Date	Target	Details
Jan 22		The seventh week of Operation Ababil 2 begins with the following banks taken down: BB&T[i] PNC[ii] Bank Of America[iii] Wells Fargo[iv] Regions Bank[v] Harris Bank[vi] CitiBank[vii]
Jan 23		Other US banks are targeted: Bank Of America; [viii] Zions Bank[ix] Harris Bank[x] PNC[xi] Huntington Bank[xii] Capital One[xiii] Wells Fargo[xiv]
Jan 24		Again, other DDoS attacks against US Banks. The wave is unprecedented and the list of the targets is very long, including: Comerica[xv] Wells Fargo[xvi] PNC[xvii] Bank Of America[xviii] Fifth Third Bank[xix] Key Bank[xx] BBVA[xxi] Citizens Bank[xxii] First Citizens Bank[xxiii] M&T Bank[xxiv] Huntington Bank[xxv] Patelco[xxvi] People’s United Bank[xxvii] UMB Financial Corporation[xxviii] Union Bank[xxix] Umpqua Bank[xxx] Bank Of the West[xxxi] Capital One[xxxii] Zions Bank[xxxiii] Synovus Bank[xxxiv] Federal Credit Union[xxxv]

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