March 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
The first half of March is gone, and here it is the Timeline of the main Cyber Attacks for this…
March 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
First Part: March 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
It is time for the second part of the March 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline, a month that will probably be remembered for the breach occurred to Global Payments, a credit card processor, whose aftermath may potentially affect up to 10 million credit card holders belonging, among the others, to Visa and MasterCard.
On the hacktivism front, not even three weeks after the arrest of several LulzSec members, a new hacking crew has appeared whose name, LulzSecReborn, clearly reminds the infamous collective and its Days of Lulz. They entered the scene with a noticeable, albeit discussed, leak: more than 170.000 records from a military dating site.
Other remarkable hacktivism-led cyber attacks include the so called #OpFariseo, a wave of Cyber Attacks targeting websites related to the visit of the Pope in Mexico, and a new cyber attack to PBS. It is also important to notice the debut of the Anonymous in China, a debut characterized by a massive wave of defacements.
Last but not least, among the events of this month there is one which in particular deserves a mention, and is the leak which targeted Vector Inc., a Japanese computer selling firm, potentially affecting more than 260,000 users.
As usual after the jump you will find all the references.
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 @pausparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
May 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
Update June 4 2012: May 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
As usual here it is the timeline of the Main Cyber Attacks occurred in May (at least according to my evaluation criteria).
This first half of the month has seen the arrival of a new hacking collective, “The Unknowns”, who has performed an impressive trail of attacks during the first days of May, targeting Space Agencies, Universities, and several other organizations. Although these events appear to be closer to cyber crime actions rather than hactivistim-driven attacks, they have not been the most remarkable ones of these days: as a matter of fact chronicles report of a massive breach at the Hangzhou Dianzi University, targeting approximately 150.000 acccounts.
As far as hacktivism is concerned, this first half of May has confirmed the constant trend of DDoS attacks targeting high profile websites such as SOCA and CIA (once again) and the Supreme Court in retaliation for the U.K. extradition laws.
Interesting to mention is also an alleged Cyber Espionage campaign targeting networks belonging to US natural gas pipeline companies.
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.
Give Me Twitter And Pastebin And I Will Hack The World!
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. And this rule worths also for the Infosec Matrix... Yesterday,…
Fortune 500 Cyber Attacks Timeline
For the Infosec professionals, this troubled 2014 will be remembered for the trail of gigantic breaches unleashed nearly exactly one year ago, when the real outcome of the infamous Target breach became to emerge. The real extent of the breach was yet to be known, like also the fact that it would not have been an isolated case, but just the beginning of a nightmare.
However this is not the only example of a Fortune 500 company deeply hit, and thanks to a very smart hint by @bufferzone, I took the opportunity to collect in this timeline all the main cyber incidents involving Fortune 500 and Fortune 500 Global companies since 2011 to nowadays.
The adopted selection criteria take into considerations only incidents involving a direct impact on end users, so defacements have not been taken into consideration.
Fortune 500 Global companies are characterized by a blank value in the Rank column, whereas Fortune 500 companies are characterized by a red value. Also, when possible I inserted both values if the targeted company belongs to both charts and, in those cases in which a subsidiary company has been targeted, I have obviously inserted the rank of the parent company.
1-15 December 2014 Cyber Attacks Timeline
It’s time for the first Cyber Attacks Timeline of December (and the last for 2014).
Of course the attention of the infosec professionals is still concentrated on the devastating cyber attack against Sony happened in November (and the world as we know it, won’t be the same again), nonetheless this first 15 days have shown some remarkable events, not least the news of a breach happened earlier this year to Sony (once again), which went unreported.
At least for once, let us start from hacktivism. The hacktivists seem to be back in action: the Anonymous have taken part, directly or indirectly to several operations motivated by the racial tensions in the US (DDoS attacks against Oakland and Ontario), the raids against the Pirate Bay (leaks of Governmental emails), and the protests against the new High Speed Train line connecting Turin and Lyon (the defacement of Official website of the Rhône-Alpes region).
A different form of hacktivism (but the border with Cyber Warfare in this case is really blurred) hit Sands Casinos earlier this year. Bloomberg has revealed that an apparent innocuous defacement happened in February was actually the mark of a more devastating attack perpetrated by Iranian hackers, who were able to wipe out all the internal clients and servers.
The Cyber Crime landscape (again maybe it should be more correct to call it Cyber Warfare) is still dominated by the outcome of the Infamous attack to Sony. Other interesting events concern the attack to an unnamed steel industry in Germany, causing physical damages, yet another wave of DDoS attacks against Sony (again!) and XboX Live, and the alleged compromise of Ars Technica requiring the registered users to change their passwords.
Last but not least, the level of state-sponsored operations is always high: at least three of them deserve to be mentioned: Operation Cleaver (allegedly backed by Iran), the resurrection of the Red October Group (Cloud Atlas or Inception) and also the discovery that the ISIS is active also in the Cyber Space, targeting a group of Syrian activists.
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 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).
October 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I)
October has come and here it is, also for this month, the first part of my Cyber Attacks Timeline covering…
Sony Under Attack… Again
Sony was under cyber attack... Again! The Company reports of unauthorized attempts to verify valid user accounts on Playstation Network,…
July 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline
This awful infosec July is over, and finally we can sum up the Cyber Attacks reported during this month. I…