GhostShell declares war on Russia’s cyberspace, and leaks 2.5 million Russian Government Accounts

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After ProjectDragonFly (100,000 accounts leaked from Chinese Sites), Project Hellfire (one million accounts belonging to Governments, Law Enforcement Agencies, etc.)…

Continue ReadingGhostShell declares war on Russia’s cyberspace, and leaks 2.5 million Russian Government Accounts

1-15 December 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Christmas is coming quickly, we have just passed the first half of December, and hence it’s time for the first update of the Cyber Attacks Timeline for December.

The Team GhostShell has decided to close the year with a clamorous Cyber Attack, and hence,as part of the project ProjectWhiteFox, has leaked 1.6 million of accounts from several organizations all over the world. This is the most important event for this first part of the month that apparently has shown a decreasing trend. Hacktivists are still focusing their attention (and their keyboards) to Israel, and Cyber Criminals are maybe preparing for the Christmas attacks.

However, the main events of the first half of December, are related to hacktivism, besides the above mentioned cyber attack, it worth to mention the new wave of massive DDoS attacks against US Banks (up to 60 Gbps of peak according to Arbor Networks), but also the leak of a ITU document on the future of Deep Packet Inspection and the attacks in Egypt, Mexico and India.

Last but not least: this two weeks also offered a giant attack to the famous Social Platform Tumblr and also the warning of the Switzerland’s national security agency (NDB) that a huge amount of secrets may have been leaked by a disgruntled IT Administrator.

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). To do so, you can use this form.

1-15 December 2012 Cyber Attack Timeline (more…)

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16-31 July 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

July is gone and hence it’s time, as usual, to summarize the main cyber events happened in the second half of this month (Part I here).

For a strange coincidence this month has shown an unusual number of breaches dating back to several years ago (2010-2012) and reported only now: Catch of The Day, Think W3 Limited, Paddy Power and Lasko are the organizations affected.

Looking quickly at Cyber Crime, these two weeks have brought the breach to The Wall Street Journal (by W0rm the same author of the breach to CNET), the disclosure of a failed attempt to disrupt the Nasdaq in 2010, a breach to the website of the European Central Bank, an extensive attack aimed to compromise the Tor Infrastructure, and, last bunt not least, the DHS advisory related to Backokff, a PoS Malware already compromising 600 organizations throughout the U.S.

Moving to Cyber Espionage, this period will be remembered for the Canadian allegations against China, related to a cyber attack against The National Research Council and the possible compromising three Israeli defense contractors responsible for building the “Iron Dome” missile shield program.

Israel was even under the radar of the Hacktivists, who concentrated there their efforts in support of the #OpSaveGaza operation.

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 July 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline (more…)

Continue Reading16-31 July 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

1-15 August 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

This month of August will be probably remembered for the massive cache of 1.2 million of password scooped up by the Russian gang Cyber Vor, undoubtedly the most important event that overshadowed all the other activity recorded in these dog days.

Besides this remarkable fact, the Cyber Crime chronicles report, among others, an unprecedented attack technique, aimed to hijack ISP traffic to steal bitcoins, the breach to SuperValu, and the compromising of 60,000 staffers who participated in Tennessee health screening program.

Cyber Espionage is still in the spotlight, with the breach to USIS (United States Investigation Services), the discovery of the Turla campaign, and also of a similar campaign targeted specifically to Ukraine.

Turning the attention to hacktivism: Ukraine, Israel and the US (following the events of St. Louis) have been the hottest frontlines, even if the most important event is perhaps the attack against Gamma International, the company behind of the infamous FinFinsher spyware.

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).

1-15 August 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline (more…)

Continue Reading1-15 August 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

1-15 October 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

Here we go with the first timeline of the main Cyber Attacks happened in October (according to my personal evaluation metric).

Two weeks very active from an information security perspective. The list of attacks is quite long and heterogeneous, with massive breaches (The Snappening and a list of nearly 7.000.000 compromised accounts used to brute-force Dropbox), a rich list of cyber crime and cyber espionage campaigns, a renewed burst of the cyber war between India and Pakistan, and a couple of operations orchestrated by hacktivists.

Digging into Cyber Crime, besides the two above quoted events, we find the Mac.BackDoor.iWorm, a widespread botnet targeting OS X, and trapping 17,000 devices. The list continues with a purported attack against Yahoo, initially believed to be orchestrated exploiting the infamous Shellshock vulnerability, the ATM malware Tyupkin, supposed to have been used for stealing millions of bucks from 50 ATMs in Eastern Europe and Russia, a breach against Kmart, and, last but not least, other two (and a half) waves of leaked photos from the Snappening.

Scrolling down the Cyber Espionage events, we cannot help but notice a similar abundance of operations with a widespread usage of 0-day vulnerabilities. Just to mention several names: Sandworm, Hurricane Panda, and even an old acquaintance like Nitro.

India and Pakistan were very busy in the Cyber Space, with  defacements and leaks against a wide range of mutual targets like also the Anonymous, who kicked off #OPHK, against China and in support of Hong Kong protesters.

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).

1-15 October 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline (more…)

Continue Reading1-15 October 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

16-31 October 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

It’s time for the second timeline of October (Part I here) covering the main cyber attacks between the 16th and 31st: yet another consistent list confirming the growing trend of the last period.

In particular, in these two weeks the most important events have been spotted inside Cyber Espionage, whose chronicles report, among other, a state-sponsored attack to an unclassified network of the White House, a relevant number of operations (APT 28, Operation Pawn Storm, Operation SMN, Operation DeathClick, a tail of the infamous Sandworm), and even a man-in-the-middle attack against Chinese iCloud users.

Cybercrime is also on a roll: the trail of attacks against retailers seems unstoppable (Staples is the latest victim), but chronicles also report a massive breach in South Korea, involving Pandora TV and a gigantic SQL Injection attack, driven by CVE-2014-3704, against every unpatched website running Drupal, existing on this desperate planet. There is also space for a little bit of irony, as in case of Sourcebooks, the publisher hacked few days before releasing the latest book of Brian Krebs.

Israel and Ukraine keep on being two hot fronts for Hacktivism, whereas India is again the cradle of  cyberwar, many events event in this months (despite limited to skirmishes involving defacements of governmental and military websites).

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 October 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline (more…)

Continue Reading16-31 October 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

1-15 March 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

And here we are with the timeline of the main Cyber Attacks happened during the first half of March.

Even if globally the number of attacks seems to keep on its decreasing trend, one event in particular will probably be remembered in the chronicles of 2014: definitely the breach to KT Corp. in Korea (12 million customers compromised) deserves a special mention (despite this is not the only one in this first half of the month), even if, apparently, the authors have been immediately busted.

Other interesting trends include the long trail of attacks against Bitcoin Exchange sites (the equivalent of $700.000 has been vaporized by hackers in this two weeks) and an anomalous number of attacks against Universities (North Dakota, Johns Hopkins and Central Oklahoma).

Moving to hacktivism, the landscape has been predictably influenced by the events happening in Ukraine (chronicles report of several attacks in Ukraine, Russia, Poland and also a DDoS against some NATO web sites).

The temperature on the Cyber Espionage front remains high, most of all in India where a local newspaper has unveiled some details related to an operation compromising 50 computers belonging to the Defense Research and Development Organization.

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 Mar 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

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Continue Reading1-15 March 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline