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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1-15 May 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Here we have with the list of the most significant Cyber Attacks happened in the first half of April (according to my very own point of view).

There are few doubts about the fact that Orange is the winner of the unwelcome prize for the most noticeable breach after the theft of the information of 1.3 million users.

Other interesting events related to Cyber Crime include the breach of Bitly, the famous URL shortening service and a new heist against a virtual currency wallet (this time the victim is Doge Vault, one of the most popular online repositories for the cryptocurrency Dogecoin).

Moving to Cyber Espionage, this month reports two interesting events, the theft of Data related to the Ukraine crisis from the Belgian Foreign Ministry, and the discovery of Operation Saffron Rose, a long-term campaign against western defense contractor carried on by a team of Iranian hackers dubbed Ajax Security Team.

Last but not least, among the hacktivists, chronicles report of  a new action of the infamous Syrian Electronic Army (against four accounts of The Wall Street journal) and the usual skirmishes between Pakistani and Indian hackers (but is questionable in my opinion to determine if those events can be classified as part of a harmless cyber war or are rather mutual actions between hactivists acting on opposite sides).

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).

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16-31 May 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Here we are with the second part of the timeline of May (first part here).

Summer is coming here, and looks like attackers prefer to spend more  time in the beach rather than in front of their keyboards. In fact the number of reported attack is confirming its decreasing trend, at least for this part of the year.

Nonetheless, the second part of may has brought some noticeable events, such as the attack to Ebay (potentially 145 million accounts compromised), the attack against the Avast! Forum (400,000 records compromised) and the Arkansas State University (“only” 50,000 records). Other noticeable (and funny) event includes the hack of a San Francisco road sign by a prankster announcing the attack by Godzilla!

Cyber Spies were indeed pretty active in this period. Chronicles report of the Operation Clandestine Fox, a cyber attack against several industries in Australia, an undisclosed utility attacked in the US, a three year social network poisoning campaign sponsored by Iran and, last but not least, the alleged attack against the $12.7 million supercomputer in New Zealand from Chinese attackers.

Instead the operations from Law Enforcement Agencies against Hacktivists seem to be effective, the number of attacks motivated by hacktivism is dramatically reducing.

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).

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1-15 December 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It’s time for the first Cyber Attacks Timeline of December (and the last for 2014).

Of course the attention of the infosec professionals is still concentrated on the devastating cyber attack against Sony happened in November (and the world as we know it, won’t be the same again), nonetheless this first 15 days have shown some remarkable events, not least the news of a breach happened earlier this year to Sony (once again), which went unreported.

At least for once, let us start from hacktivism. The hacktivists seem to be back in action: the Anonymous have taken part, directly or indirectly to several operations motivated by the racial tensions in the US (DDoS attacks against Oakland and Ontario), the raids against the Pirate Bay (leaks of Governmental emails), and the protests against the new High Speed Train line connecting Turin and Lyon (the defacement of  Official website of the Rhône-Alpes region).

A different form of hacktivism (but the border with Cyber Warfare in this case is really blurred) hit Sands Casinos earlier this year. Bloomberg has revealed that an apparent innocuous defacement happened in February was actually the mark of a more devastating attack perpetrated by Iranian hackers, who were able to wipe out all the internal clients and servers.

The Cyber Crime landscape (again maybe it should be more correct to call it Cyber Warfare) is still dominated by the outcome of the Infamous attack to Sony. Other interesting events concern the attack to an unnamed steel industry in Germany, causing physical damages, yet another wave of DDoS attacks against Sony (again!) and XboX Live, and the alleged compromise of Ars Technica requiring the registered users to change their passwords.

Last but not least, the level of state-sponsored operations is always high: at least three of them deserve to be mentioned: Operation Cleaver (allegedly backed by Iran), the resurrection of the Red October Group (Cloud Atlas or Inception) and also the discovery that the ISIS is active also in the Cyber Space, targeting a group of Syrian activists.

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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