16-31 July 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

So, the second half of July is ready to show us what happened in the cyber-landscape.

It’s Summer, the dog days are among us, and the temperatures are quite high even under the Infosec Sun. Most of all for software companies that, even if for different motivations, were the unwelcome targets of the most remarkable attacks of these two weeks: Ubuntuforums.org has been hacked, putting at risk 1.82 million of accounts, and even three well-know mobile services TrueCaller, Viber and TangoMe suffered the same fate.

But this month will be probably remembered for the indictment of five est European men who, between 2005 and 2012 infiltrated some of the world’s biggest financial institutions, pilfering data for more than 160 million credit cards.

Other noticeable events include the infiltration against apple.developer.com and the breach against Stanford University affecting potentially 72,000 users.

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-july-2013-cyber-attacks-timeline

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Continue Reading16-31 July 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

July 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)

Update 08/02/2012: July 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)

Although the number of attacks has considerably diminuished, the first half of July has left several high-profile attacks which deserverd huge attention, exposing in theory more than 2,000,000 individuals. Yahoo! Voice, Android Forums, Nvidia, Formspring, Billabong and ASUS are several of the well-known names that were victims of the high-profile breaches in the first two weeks of July.

World Health Organization and PBS (once again) were also illustrious victims of Cyber Attacks.

Besides these remarkable events, it looks like the actions carried on by the Law Enforcement agencies in the last period led to some results since the number of incidents looks undoubtably smaller than the previous months.

For what concerns the cyber attacks driven by hacktivism, it is particularly important to notice #OpPedoChat, still ongoing, which caused many pedophiles to be exposed, in several cases with unpredictable consequences, as in Belgium where a far-right official resigned after Anonymous’ Paedophilia Claims.

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 timelines (and charts).

(more…)

Continue ReadingJuly 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)

July 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)

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).

(more…)

Continue ReadingJuly 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)

1-15 July 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

I am quite in time with the list of the main Cyber Attacks occurred in the first half of July.

This period has been quite hard for the Video Games Industry with two noticeable events targeting Konami and Ubisoft (58 million of account potentially affected in this second case). Another noticeable breach involves the attack against the Italian Website of Sony, which lead to 40,000 records leaked.

Regarding hacktivism, Turkey keeps on being quite hot in this period, and not only for the Summer: several governmental targets have been hits by cyber attacks directly related to the OpTurkey initiative.

Last but not least: you will notice I have added a new column indicating the target country: for the sake of clarity, it refers to the nationality of the targeted organization and not to the geo-location of the targeted IP.

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 July 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline (more…)

Continue Reading1-15 July 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline