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May 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 24, 2015
Post category:Cyber Attacks Timelines Security
Post comments:0 Comments
Reading time:8 mins read
Post published:June 4, 2012

As usual, here it is the second part of the Cyber Attacks Timeline for the month of May 2012: a month particularly rich of Cyber Events. As you will probably know, the Flame malware has monopolized the attention, deserving the most attention from the Information Security Professional.

Nevertheless the scene has offered many interesting events, among which it worths to mention the breach of 123,000 federal employees records, the breach affecting University of Nebraska, and, last but not least, the breach against WHCMS (which, as we will soon see, has proved to be fatal for its author).

The hacktivist front is still hot and preannounces another hot summer. On the other hand the authors of several remarkable cyber-criminal actions are probably going to leave the scene: the long trail of arrests made by Law Enforcement Agencies against hackers has continued in this month and has hence led to the arrest of Cosmo, the leader of the infamous group UGNazi, which claimed to be the author of the Cyber Attack against WHCMS.

In your opinion are the arrests against hackers really going to stop the growing number of Cyber Attacks (acting as a deterrent)?

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 (regularly updated), and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.

After the jump you find all the references, and at this link the first part covering 1-15 May.

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June 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 24, 2015
Post category:Cyber Attacks Timelines Security
Post comments:0 Comments
Reading time:9 mins read
Post published:June 18, 2012

Update 07/05/2012: June 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)

A (first half of the) month living dangerously…

June has come and strongly confirms that Summer is the preferred month for Cybercrookers: just look back at June 2011 and you will probably remember the days of Lulz of the infamous LulzSec Collective (which curiously seems to be reborn!).

June 2012 has shown a remarkable number of incidents and is proving to be a mensis horribilis (horrible month) for Social Networks and Online Services in general, due to the high profile breaches of LinkedIn, Last.Fm, eHarmony and the online game League of Legends.

On a geographic scale, looks like China is becoming another important source of Cyber incidents, having been targeted from #TeamGhostShell, who claim, inside their #ProjectDragonFly, to have obtained up to 800,000 accounts from different sources.

Hacktivism-led actions seem (apparently) to decline, whilst, on the Cyber Crime front, a new collective, UGNazi, is taking the scene, having confirmed, in the first part of June, the wake of cyber attacks, we have become familiar with for some time.

Another Infosec Summer promising to be very hot!

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 (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 timeline.

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June 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 24, 2015
Post category:Cyber Attacks Timelines Security
Post comments:1 Comment
Reading time:7 mins read
Post published:July 5, 2012

Part I (1-15 June) at this link

From an information security perspective, the second half of June has been characterized by the hacking collective UGNAZI (and its members) and also by an individual hacker: .c0mrade AKA @OfficialComrade.

Both entities have left behind them a long trail of Cyber Attacks against different targets (in several cases the real extent of the attack is uncertain) and with different techniques, although it is likely that the UGNAZI collective will be forced to change the plans after the arrest of the group’s leader, JoshTheGod, nearly at the end of the month (27^thof June), effectively they have considerably reduced the rate of their cyber attacks in the second part of the analyzed period.

On the other hand, hospitals, banks, several major airlines are only few examples of the preys fallen under the attacks carried on by .c0mrade. Plese notce that from Cyber Crime perspective, is also interesting to notice the High Roller Operation, a giant fraud against the banking industry, unmasked by McAfee.

Needless to say, the Cyber War front is always hot, most of all in Middle East, were several DDoS attacks targeted some Israeli institutions and, most of all, an alleged unspecified massive Cyber Attack targeted tje Islamic Republic of Iran.

The hacktitic landscape is completely different: maybe hacktivists have chosen to go on vacation since June 2012 has apparently shown a decreasing trend, in sharp contrast with an year ago, when the information security community lived one of its most troubled periods.

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 (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 timeline.

(more…)

July 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 24, 2015
Post category:Cyber Attacks Timelines Security
Post comments:1 Comment
Reading time:7 mins read
Post published:August 3, 2012

Click here for Part I.

The Dog Days are nearly here. Weather forecast are announcing for Italy one of the hottest summers since 2003, and the same can be said for the Infosec temperature, although, July 2012 has been very different from the same month of 2011, which was deeply characterized by hacktvism.

Instead looks like that hacktivists have partially left the scene in favor of cyber criminals who executed several high profile breaches also in the second part of the month: Maplesoft, Gamigo, KT Corporation and Dropbox are the most remarkable victims of cyber-attacks, but also other important firms, even if with different scales, have been hit by (improvised) Cyber Criminals. One example for all? Nike who suffered a loss of $80,000 by a 25-year improvised hacker, who decided that exploiting a web vulnerability was the best way to acquire professional merchandise.

But probably the prize for the most “peculiar” cyber-criminal is completely deserved by Catherine Venusto, who successfully changed her sons’ grade for 110 times between 2011 and 2012.

As far as the Hacktivism is concerned, although we were not in the same condition of one year ago (a leak every day kept security away), this month has offered the massive leak of the Australian Provider AAPT, with 40 gb of data allegedly stolen by the Anonymous.

Last but not least, a special mention for the cyber espionage campaigns, that had an unprecedented growth in this month: Israel, Iran, Japan, the European Union and Canada, are only few of the victims. Iran gained also an unwelcome record, the first nation to be hit by a malware capable of blasting PC speakers with an AC/DC song…

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).

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August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 24, 2015
Post category:Cyber Attacks Timelines Security
Post comments:4 Comments
Reading time:6 mins read
Post published:August 20, 2012

The first half of August has seen a revamping of Hacktivism, encouraged by the takedown of the famous Torrent Tracker Demonoid (and the consequent OpDemonoid targeting most of all Ukrainian sites), but also encouraged by OpAustralia, the wave of attacks against Australian Web Sites carried on against the Australian Internet Surveillance Law (apparently the latter operation was successful since the controversial law has been put on standby).

But Hacktivism was not the only “trend topic” for this period. The Middle East continues to be the cradle for unexpected cyber weapons threats. In August, two new occurrences of allegedly state sponsored malware: Gauss, a cyber-espionage tool targeting bank transaction, and Shamoon , a destructive malware targeting energy companies.

These are probably the most remarkable Cyber Events of this period, which has also seen a purported giant breach targeting Pearl.fr, a French e-commerce website whose 729,000 accounts, together with over 1 million bank transaction details, have been subtracted by hackers.

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).

(more…)

16 – 31 August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 24, 2015
Post category:Cyber Attacks Timelines Security
Post comments:0 Comments
Reading time:7 mins read
Post published:September 5, 2012

Here the first part with the timeline from 1 to 15 August 2012.

Here we are with the second part of the August 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline. A second part of the month that has been characterized by hacktivism, most of all because of the so-called OperationFreeAssange, which has targeted many high-profile websites.

Among the targets of the month, Philips has been particularly “unlucky”. The Dutch giant has been the victim of three Cyber Attacks, even if there are several doubts about the authenticity of the hacks.

But maybe the biggest operation of the month is the #ProjectHellFire, carried on by the collective @TeamGhostShell, that has unleashed something as 1 million of accounts belonging to different sectors (banks, government agencies, consulting firms, law enforcement and the CIA). And the group promises new action for this Fall and Winter.

The Middle East confirms to be very hot, with a new Cyber Attack, probably another occurrence of Shamoon, targeting RasGas, yet another Oil Company.

Just one note: of course it is impossible to track all the targets of the #OpFreeAssange. You can find a complete list at cyberwarnews.info.

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).

(more…)

1-15 October 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Post author:Paolo Passeri
Post last modified:May 24, 2015
Post category:Cyber Attacks Timelines Security
Post comments:0 Comments
Reading time:6 mins read
Post published:October 17, 2012

Apparently October has shown a decrease in the number of Cyber Attacks. At least from a mere numerical perspective. It is not a coincidence that I used the term “Apparently” since if we consider the most important event of the month: the massive leak from Worldwide universities executed by Team GhostShell inside their ProjectWestWind operation, things are well different.

The one carried on by Team Ghost Shell (approximately 120k accounts leaked) is for sure the most important operation of the current month which has also shown the first virtual hacking operation (at least as far as I remember): the massive death of avatars inside World of Warcraft.

Other remarkable events in the first half of October concern the attack to Playspan (possibly millions of users affected), the new waves of DDoS cyber attacks against US banks, and an alleged hijacking to the Irish domains of Google and Yahoo!.

It worth to mention also the breach of University of Georgia (8,500 users affected) and the 400,000 bucks stolen by unknown hackers to the City of Burlington.

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).

(more…)