Here’s the first timeline of August, covering the main cyber attacks occurred in the first half of the eighth month of this troubled 2019. Even if we haven’t achieved the same level of July, the temperature of the infosec thermometer continues to be quite high, since in this timeline I have collected...
Unfortunately, the trend of the first fortnight of October continued and the second half of the month has brought us…
In an exclusive interview to BBC, a key defector of the North Korean regime, Prof Kim Heung-Kwang, has given an…
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).
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).
It’s time for analyzing the main cyber Attacks happened in September.
From an information security perspective, the second half of September has been characterized by the discovery of three operations related to targeted attacks against different countries and sectors. Two in particular, DeputyDog and IceFrog, targeting have a common denominator: Japan.
In the same period. despite the numerous members brought to court, the Anonymous have continued their operations all over the World (Cambodia and New Zealand have been the hottest fronts).
Considering Cyber Crime, this month has raised the attention to the risks posed by fake KVM switches. With a similar device, a gang of cyber-thieves was able to steal £1.3 M from a Barclays Computer. Unfortunately for them this magic box was not able to avoid them to get busted (in any case they deserved a mention in the timeline). For sure you will remember that a similar cyber-plot has also been tried against Santander.
On the cyber warfare front, the temperature of the virtual battlefield among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh remains quite hot. On the other side of the World, US officials have unveiled an escalation of cyber attacks from Iran. Curiously this admission was done few days before Mojtaba Ahmad, the head of Iran’s cyber warfare programme, has been shot dead (although Iranian officials are denying similar claims).
Last but not least the Belgium Government has admitted to have been the victim of a targeted attack. Unfortunately, in this case the suspects are directed to NSA!
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).
So unfortunately the Summer is nearly gone, but, despite the sadness for the beautiful season fading away, here we are with the usual analysis of what’s happened in September from a Security Information perspective.
The main event for the first half of September is the massive attack against Vodafone Germany, potentially compromising more than 2 million customer records. Actually it was very hard to declare a main event, since even Belgacom performed was on the infosec news, unleashing some information related to a targeted attack, it was victim of. Always on the Cyber Crime front, it’s also worth to mention the failed (luckily) attack against Santander.
Nothing new under the Hacktivism front, that offered a minor revamp of the Syrian Electronic Army, despite the claims of them being dox’ed, some events in Turkey, where the cyber temperature remains hot despite the Summer fading away, and again some small attacks related to Syria and the NSA affair.
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).
First part here: 1-15 March 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline
March is gone and hence it is time to analyze the events that characterized the past month.
Two events in particular gained the first pages of the magazines: the wiper malware in Korea and the DDoS attack against Spamhaus that, maybe exaggerating, has been defined the “biggest attack in history”.
But these were not the only noticeable attacks in this second part of the month: the Operation Ababil of the Izz ad-din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters against U.S. banks achieved a new phase, constantly disrupting the connectivity of several high profile financial targets, including Chase, USBank, etc.; Telenor admitted to have been hacked by high-tech spies emptying the content of executives’ personal computers, and also the Anonymous claimed to have breached the Mossad, despite there are many doubts about this last attack.
Other important events include a breach against MTV Taiwan (600,000 accounts), McDonald’s (200,000 accounts), the Turkish Ministry Of Economy (96,000 accounts), and Renault Colombia (31,000 accounts leaked).
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).
Other troubles for system administrators: March is confirming the 2013 dangerous trend with several high profile breaches against industrial, financial and governmental targets.
The first two weeks of March have begun with the breach to Evernote, and continued with (among the others) the third phase of the infamous Operation Ababil, targeting U.S. Banks and an alleged Chinese attack against the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Additional noticeable events include a wave of DDoS attacks against several Czech Republic’s targets (belonging to media, news and financial sector), a breach suffered by the NIST Vulnerability Database (unfortunately not an isolated example of the attacks against US governmental targets happened in these two weeks) and also the leak of 20,000 records from an Avast! German distributor.
Last but not least, the examined period has also confirmed the role of Twitter as the new mean to make resounding attacks against single individuals or organizations. Qatar Foundation, Saudi Aramco, and France 24 are only several of the organizations fallen victims of accounts hijacking.
Of course, these are only the main events, feel free to scroll down the list to analyze in detail what happened in these two weeks.
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).
Once again, a special thanks to Kim Guldberg AKA @bufferzone for continuously advising me about significant cyber events through the Submit Form! Much Appreciated!
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).
