1-15 November 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline

The first half of November is gone, so it’s time for the list of the main cyber attacks occurred during these fifteen days.

Confirming the trend of the last months, the activity has been quite sustained. For sure, the most remarkable attack has targeted the Turkish branch of HSBC, and has affected 2.7 million customers, whose credit cards have been compromised (and apparently the bank has decided not to issue new cards for the impacted users).

Again the operations related to cyber espionage have played an important role: some new campaigns have come to light (for instance Darkhotel), and also several noticeable attacks have been discovered, like the one against the United States Postal Service (600,000 users affected) or the one against the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Even hacktivists have been quite active: the RedHack collective has reemerged from several months in stealth mode (they claim to have deleted 650,000 USD worth 0f electricity power debt), and some hackers claiming to be affiliated to the Anonymous collective have performed similar operations in Italy (in parallel with the delicate social and economical period) and the Philippines.

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-november-2014-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).

1-15 May 2014 Cyber Attacks Timelines (more…)

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