It's time to publish the first timeline of April, covering the main cyber attacks occurred in the first fortnight of this month. The COVID-19 emergency continues to characterize the threat landscape, and in this timeline I have collected...
And here we are we the second part of the October 2013 Cyber Attacks Timeline (first part here).
It’s interesting to notice how sophisticated cyber attacks are characterizing the final part of this 2013. The second timeline of October reports at least three remarkable cases: Belgacom (once again), the Finland’s Foreign Ministry and a wave of spear phishing against several targets belonging to Israeli Industries in the defense and security sector
Other noticeable events include the compromising of some servers belonging to php.net, the breach to the online database MongoHQ, and also a breach involving NeoGaf, a popular video games forum, targeting potentially 114,000 users.
The latter is the only remarkable breach (at least from a numerical perspective) of this second half of October, in the same period in which new revelations indicate that the number of victims of the infamous Adobe breach occurred in the first part of this month appears 12 times greater than initially estimated (38M users).
For the rest, the summary of the month is closed by the usual background of hacktivism, a growing phenomenon that is showing multiple different “flavors” and hence is no more characterized by the only infamous Anonymous collective.
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).
So, the second half of July is ready to show us what happened in the cyber-landscape.
It’s Summer, the dog days are among us, and the temperatures are quite high even under the Infosec Sun. Most of all for software companies that, even if for different motivations, were the unwelcome targets of the most remarkable attacks of these two weeks: Ubuntuforums.org has been hacked, putting at risk 1.82 million of accounts, and even three well-know mobile services TrueCaller, Viber and TangoMe suffered the same fate.
But this month will be probably remembered for the indictment of five est European men who, between 2005 and 2012 infiltrated some of the world’s biggest financial institutions, pilfering data for more than 160 million credit cards.
Other noticeable events include the infiltration against apple.developer.com and the breach against Stanford University affecting potentially 72,000 users.
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).
And here we are with the second part of the Cyber Attacks Timeline for May (first part here).
The second half of the month has shown an unusual activity with several high-profile breaches motivated by Cyber-Crime or Hacktivism, but also with the disclosure of massive Cyber-Espionage operations.
The unwelcome prize for the “Breach of the Month” is for Yahoo! Japan, that suffered the possible compromising of 22 million users (but in general this was an hard month for the Far East considering that also Groupon Taiwan suffered an illegitimate attempt to access the data of its 4.1 million of customers).
On the cyber-espionage front, the leading role is for the Chinese cyber army, accused of compromising the secret plans of advanced weapons systems from the U.S. and the secret plans for the new headquarter of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.
On the Hacktivism front, this month has been particularly troubled for the South African Police, whose web site has been hacked with the compromising of 16,000 individuals, including 15,700 whistle-bowlers.
Other noticeable events include the unauthorized access against the well known open source CMS Drupal (causing the reset of 1 million of passwords), the trail of hijacked Twitter accounts by the Syrian Electronic Army and also an unprecedented wave of attacks against targets belonging to Automotive.
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).
Here is the summary of the Cyber Attacks Timeline for February. A month that will probably be remembered for the “sophisticated” cyber attacks to the two main social networks: Facebook and Twitter.
But the attacks against the two major social networks were not the only remarkable events of this period. Other governmental and industrial high-profile targets have fallen under the blows of (state-sponsored) cyber criminals: the list of the governmental targets is led by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while Bit9, a primary security firm, was also targeted, leading the chart of Industrial targets.
Hacktivists have raised the bar and breached the Federal Reserve, leaking the details of 4,000 U.S. Banks executives. Similarly, the Bush family was also targeted, suffering the leak of private emails.
Even if the list is not as long as the one of January, it includes other important targets, so, scroll it down to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace. Also have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011, 2012, 2013, 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.
The first half of August has seen a revamping of Hacktivism, encouraged by the takedown of the famous Torrent Tracker Demonoid (and the consequent OpDemonoid targeting most of all Ukrainian sites), but also encouraged by OpAustralia, the wave of attacks against Australian Web Sites carried on against the Australian Internet Surveillance Law (apparently the latter operation was successful since the controversial law has been put on standby).
But Hacktivism was not the only “trend topic” for this period. The Middle East continues to be the cradle for unexpected cyber weapons threats. In August, two new occurrences of allegedly state sponsored malware: Gauss, a cyber-espionage tool targeting bank transaction, and Shamoon , a destructive malware targeting energy companies.
These are probably the most remarkable Cyber Events of this period, which has also seen a purported giant breach targeting Pearl.fr, a French e-commerce website whose 729,000 accounts, together with over 1 million bank transaction details, have been subtracted by hackers.
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).
So here we are with the first Cyber Attacks Timeline for 2013 covering the first half of January.
Apparently the new year has begun with an intense activity by Cyber Crooks. Hacktivists and Cyber Criminals had many time to spend in front of their keyboards during the holiday break, and as a consequence the number of breaches with more than 10.000 accounts compromised is incredibly high. WWF China, the City of Steubenville, Ohio and The German Chamber of Commerce are only three examples of institutions that suffered massive breaches during the beginning of this year.
But the massive breaches are not the only remarkable events of this period: the waves of DDoS Attacks against US banks continued (and promise to extend also in the next weeks), Kaspersky Lab discovered a new massive Cyber Espionage Campaign dubbed “Red October”, and also the Japan Farm Ministry was hit by yet another Cyber Attack, allegedly originating from China…
If this is only the beginning… 2013 promises to be pretty much troubled for system administrators…
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.
It is time for the summary of the second half of February, two weeks of remarkable cyber attacks against high-tech giants, massive breaches and Twitter Account Hijackings.
Probably the most resounding events of this period (maybe more for the high profile of the victims than for the actual effects) are the two attacks, allegedly originating from China, (with a common root cause, the compromising of an iPhone developer forum) carried on against Apple and Microsoft.
But not only the two high-tech giants, other illustrious victims have fallen under the blows of hacktivists and cyber criminals. The list is quite long and includes Bank of America, American Express, Casio, ZenDesk, cPanel, Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation, etc.).
Last but not least, the unprecedented trail of Cyber attack against Twitter Profile belonging to single individuals (see Donald Trump) or Corporations (Burger King and Jeep). Maybe it is time to change the passwords…
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).
A special thanks to Kim Guldberg AKA @bufferzone for continuously advising me about significant cyber events through the Submit Form! Much Appreciated!
