1-15 November 2019 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It's time to publish the first timeline of November covering the main cyber attacks occurred in the first fifteen days of this month. In this timeline I have collected a total of 82 events including 8 that sneaked into...

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16-30 September 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

And finally we can complete the September 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I here), with the second part covering the most important events between the 16th and the 30th.

A very fruitful month for Cyber Criminals, since there are several events that will be remembered. For sure the Shellshock vulnerability will spoil the troubled sleeps of many System Administrators. In any case this is not the only remarkable event, the chronicles report of an (un)expected tail of the Celebrity Leak scandal (the so-called Fappening), with other two rounds of leaked pictures occurred on the 20th and the 26th, and a couple of massive breaches against TripAdvisor subsidiary Viator (1.4 million users affected) and Japan Airlines (750,000 users affected). Last but not least, it is also worthwhile to mention the group of teen hackers charged for hacking into Microsoft, the US Army and several game companies, stealing $100 million in Intellectual Property, and the so-called Operation Harkonnen, the longest cyber crime campaign ever.

Regarding the Cyber Espionage, the timeline reports the discovery of yet another Chinese Operation against US contractors, and a coordinated state-sponsored mobile malware aimed to intercept protesters in Hong Kong.

At least for once… Nothing particular interesting for Hacktivism…

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).16-30-september-2014-cyber-attacks-timeline

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16-31 August 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

August is gone, and here we are with the list of the most noticeable cyber attacks occurred during the second half of the month (first part here).

This period will be probably remembered for the massive cyber attack against Community Health Systems (4.5 million records compromised), the wave of coordinated attacks targeting JPMorgan Chase and at least four other US banks, the malware targeting 51 franchised stores of UPS, and, last but not least, the mother of all breaches in Korea (220 million records containing personal information 0f 27 million people). Another noticeable event was also the coordinated DDoS attacks against Sony Entertainment Network, Xbox Live and other online gaming services.

For what concerns cyber espionage, chronicles report, among other things, the massive coordinated cyber attack against 50 Norwegian oil and energy companies, the discovery of three cyber attacks (within the past three years) against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the theft of classified information from the Malaysian agencies involved in the MH370 investigation.

Instead, nothing particularly meaningful has been reported for hacktivism: many sparse actions (mostly against direct or indirect interests of Israel) of limited impact and hence without particular consequences.

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).16-31-august-2014-cyber-attacks-timeline-v2

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16-30 November 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

The Cyber Monday has just gone, and here we are with the second Cyber Attacks Timeline of November (Part I here).

Even if no massive breaches against retailers have been discovered so far (however do not get carried away since they will probably need several weeks to surface!), this month equally shows some remarkable events for Cyber Crime, Hacktivism and Cyber Espionage.

Actually I just really did not know where to begin, since each sector shows at least one noticeable events. However, after scrolling down the list, I believe that the crown of the month is all for the powerful Regin, the brand new cyber weapon discovered by Symantec. If you believed that the complexity of Stuxnet, Flame and Duqu was a closed page, you will have to change your mind.

This event has overshadowed the massive attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, allegedly traced to North Korea, in the wake of the release of the comedy “The Interview”, which has been deemed discriminatory against the country and inciting to terrorism. This attack, which has more then one similarity with the infamous Dark Seoul, has completely blocked the Sony internal IT network and is making happy many individuals worldwide, since several Gigabytes of unreleased material are being leaked in these hours.

Last but not least the hacktivists are back! Not only the Syrian Electronic Army has exited stealth mode, with an attack to Gigya, an identity management platform, which has affected many illustrious victims worldwide, but also the Anonymous have been the authors of several attacks, just like the good old days, in the wake of the controversial decision of the Ferguson grand jury decision.

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).

16-30 November 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline (more…)

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16-31 December Cyber Attacks Timeline

Despite still related to December 2014, here is the first timeline for 2015 covering the main events occurred between the 16th and 31st December 2014 (first part here).

No doubt, this Christmas will be remembered for the unwelcome surprise of the DDoS attack performed by the infamous Lizard Squad against the online services of Sony and Microsoft. An attack that has shattered the dreams of many players, just few minutes after unwrapping their brand new consoles under the Christmas Tree. However, the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and inevitably two members of the collective have allegedly been arrested (not before having attempted a Sybil Attack against Tor).

But the latter was not the only attack targeting the Tor anonymity service in this period, which also suffered an unexplained outage affecting a cluster of Tor Directory Authority Servers in a Rotterdam data center.

Other noticeable events concern the outage of the Internet connection in North Korea (despite it is not completely clear if caused by a cyber attack or a fault), a malware detected in a South Korea power plant, the attacks targeting the ICANN and the ISC Consortium, two among the most important organizations for the Internet, and (yet another) breach targeting NVIDIA.

Moving to a different topic, all in all the hacktivists decided to enjoy the Christmas vacations with the exception of the Syrian Electronic Army who were back, and defaced an online magazine, the International Business Time, for an article against the Syrian regime.

Last but not least, with regard to  Cyber Espionage, there have been two operations discovered in this period: an alleged attack perpetrated by Chinese hackers against an Afghan CDN targeting directly many local governmental sites, and indirectly many foreign institutions, and also the discovery of the Anunak group, a well-organized crew able to steal USD $25 Million with a long lasting cyber espionage operation against targets in Europe and the US.

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).

16-31 December 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline (more…)

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