14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past week, many of the stories we’ve covered have been somehow related to attacks against governments.
Anonymous hackers started the week by leaking thousands of documents stolen from Greece’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The ministry has confirmed that the hacktivists have managed to breach its email systems.
Later in the week, the same hackers published files allegedly taken from the systems of Poland’s Ministry of Economy, specifically the Trade and Investment Promotion Sections of Polish Embassies and Consulates (trade.gov.pl).
A major attack was also launched against the Pakistani government. A total of 18 major government websites have been hacked and defaced by members of Pak Mad Hunters. The government took down all the hacked websites following the attack.
Belgacom has reported uncovering evidence of what could be a new data breach. The company has identified changes made to the software of a router. The telecoms giant is still investigating if this is a new breach, or if the changes were been made during the attack brought to light in September.
In the meantime, Dutch officials have noted that the recent attacks on DigiNotar and KPN are not the work of state-sponsored actors.
The Bank of Russia and other Russian financial institutions have been disrupted by DDOS attacks. Bank of Russia representatives believe the cyberattacks have been launched in an effort to undermine trust in the banking sector. In the meanwhile, some say Anonymous Caucasus might be responsible for the attacks.
Anonymous hackers are threatening the Moroccan government after two teens who posted a photo of them kissing on Facebook have been arrested. The website of the Department of Water has already been hacked.
Other hacktivists of the Anonymous movement have breached and defaced several websites of the government and military of Venezuela. In Turkey, RedHack hacked the systems of the Union of Turkish Public Enterprises.
The Syrian Electronic Army is back. The group has hacked the systems of the Qatar Domains Registry (registry.qa) and changed the DNS records of several major domains.
Finally, South Korean officials say the cyberattacks launched by North Korea have caused losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.
When it comes to hack attacks against commercial entities, we mention the ones that targeted RedBull, PR Newswire, and video game forum NeoGAF.
This week, we’ve also presented some stories related to the arrests and indictments of alleged hackers. A Canadian has been charged with hacking the systems of four companies, and a 19-year-old has been arrested in the UK for developing and distributing malware.
A man has been sentenced in the US to 5 months for hacking SodaHead.com accounts, and, in Finland, a youth has been arrested on suspicion of being part of an international hacker group.
Here are some other interesting stories, in case you’ve missed them:
Ships can be hacked, experts have demonstrated
17-year-old develops malware for Firefox OS
Muslim websites in Russia hacked
ESET and Bitdefender domains hijacked by KDMS Team
Google, Yahoo, Amazon and other high-profile domains from Costa Rica defaced