14 DAY TRIAL // In case you haven’t been following this week’s cyber security events and you want to catch up, here’s a brief of the week’s main events and incidents.
Over the past days, the Syrian Electronic Army has made numerous headlines. First, because they hacked the Twitter account and the SMS service of E! Online.
Later, they broke into the systems of satirical news organization The Onion with the aid of cleverly designed phishing emails.
The Onion’s tech team published a blog post to detail how the hackers managed to penetrate their accounts. At least 5 employees fell into the trap set by the pro-Assad hacktivists.
After these hacks, someone pretending to represent the Syrian Electronic Army started sending out emails claiming the group hacked into Israeli critical infrastructure systems. However, SEA denied any involvement arguing that all their announcements were made via their website and their Twitter accounts.
And since we’re talking about hacks, it’s worth mentioning that OpUSA took place this week. However, the campaign didn’t cause any significant damage.
In fact, it mostly consisted of small website defacements, “pedestrian” DDOS attacks, and fake data leaks.
The only important organization that admitted being hacked as part of OpUSA is the Honolulu Police Department.
Other noteworthy hacks are the ones that impacted the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts, Name.com, the online accounts of famous author Candace Bushnell, Thailand’s Prime Minister, and several Dutch government websites.
Some Philippines government websites were also disrupted with DDOS attacks. The attacks came after the Philippines government refused to apologize for opening fire on a Taiwanese fishing vessel.
As far as arrests, prosecutions and convictions are concerned, we learned that Sven Olaf Kamphuis, the man suspected of launching a DDOS attack against Spamhaus, was extradited from Spain to the Netherlands.
8 members of massive cybercrime ring were charged by US authorities, a man was arrested on suspicion of making $1.6 million (€1.2 million) via a Nigerian scam, and Turkish prosecutors decided RedHack could not be considered a terrorist group because their actions were not violent.
Romanian cybercriminals also made a few headlines. One Romanian national accused of participating in a multi-million dollar fraud scheme that targeted hundreds of US merchants pleaded guilty, and three men suspected of being involved in a cyber-fraud ring were
extradited to the US.
Hamza Bendelladj of Algeria, believed to be involved in the development and distribution of the SpyEye malware, was also extradited to the United States.
Here are some other articles worth reading, in case you’ve missed them:
Queen Elizabeth II delivers annual speech.
Huawei CEO gives first ever interview. Tries to address cyber espionage concerns.
9 full sandbox bypass vulnerabilities found in IBM Java.