16-30 April 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Here’s the second part of the April cyber attacks Timeline (Part I at this link)

The most remarkable event of this period has certainly been the breach suffered by Living Social potentially exposing 50 million customers of the e-commerce website. Other illustrious victims of the month include the mobile operator DoCoMo and the online reputation firm Reputation.com.

The wake of DDoS attacks has continued even in the second part of the month: once again several U.S. banks have fallen under the blows of the Izz ad-din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters.

Like in the first  half of the month, following a consolidating trend in this 2013, the Syrian Electronic Army has continued his wave of attacks against Twitter accounts (even the FIFA has been targeted). In one case, the hijacking of the Twitter account of Associated Press, the bogus tweets related to an alleged attack against the White House, the effect has crossed the boundaries of the cyber space (the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 150 points, or about 1 percent, immediately following the tweet).

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).

April 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline Part II

(more…)

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1-15 May 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

And here we are with our bi-weekly review of the main cyber attacks. This time is the turn of the first half of May.

Probably this month will be remembered for the huge cyber-heist against two Payment Processors, and affecting two banks (National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah PSC in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman), which suffered a massive loss of $45 million due to an endless wave of unlimited withdrawals from their ATMs.

Other relevant actions related to Cyber-criminal operations include the massive breaches against MSI Taiwan (50,000 records affected) and most of all, the Washington state Administrative Office of the Courts (up to 160,000 SSN and 1 million driver’s license numbers).

On the other hand, the hacktivists concentrated their efforts on the so-called OpUSA (7 May), even if it looks like that most of the attacks were nuisance-level. Instead, and this is a great news, after months of intense activity, the operation Ababil come to a stop.

On the cyber war front, this month reports an unedited conflict between Taiwan and Philippines.

Last but not least, even if this attack dates back to 2007, on the Cyber-Espionage front, Bloomberg has shaken this lazy month revealing the repeated attacks by the infamous Comment Crew hackers against Qinetiq, a very critical Defense contractor. The cyber threats from the Red Dragon (real or alleged) keep on scaring the western world.

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).

May 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline Part I (more…)

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16-30 June 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It’s time for the second part of the June 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline (first part here).

The last two weeks of June have been characterized by an unusual cyber activity in the Korean Peninsula. In a dramatic escalation of events (coinciding with the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War), both countries have attracted the unwelcome attentions of hacktivists and (alleged) state-sponsored groups, being targeted by a massive wave of Cyber attacks, with the South suffering the worst consequences (a huge amount of records subtracted by the attackers).

On the hacktivism front, the most remarkable events involved some actions in Brazil and Africa, and the trail of attacks in Turkey that even characterized the first half of the month. The chronicles of the month also report an unsuccessful operation: the results of the so-called OpPetrol have been negligible (most of all in comparison to the huge expectations) with few nuisance-level attacks.

On the cyber crime front, the most remarkable events involved the attacks against Blizzard, that forced the company to temporarily close mobile access to its auction service, a serious breach against a Samsung service in Kazakhstan, a targeted attack against the internal network of Opera Software (aimed to steal code signing certificates) and several attacks to some DNS registrars. In particular the most serious has been perpetrated against Network Solutions, affecting nearly 5000 domains, among which LinkedIn.

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 June 2013 Cyber Atacks Timeline (more…)

Continue Reading16-30 June 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline