Below is a summary of incidents from over the last months. For the full list, click the download link at the end of this article.
September 2023: Indian hacktivists targeted Canada’s military and Parliament websites with DDoS attacks that slowed system operations for several hours. Hacktivists referenced Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s public accusation against India of killing Sikh independence activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar as motivation for the hack.
September 2023: Iranian hackers launched a cyberattack against Israel’s railroad network. The hackers used a phishing campaign to target the network’s electrical infrastructure. Brazilian and UAE companies were also reportedly targeted in the same attack.
September 2023: U.S. and Japanese officials warn that Chinese state-sponsored hackers placed modifying software inside routers to target government industries and companies located in both countries. The hackers use firmware implants to stay hidden and move around in their target’s networks. China has denied the allegations.
September 2023: A massive cyberattack hit Bermuda’s Department of Planning and other government services. The country’s hospitals, transportation, and education centers remained functional, but other services were down for several weeks. Bermuda announced that it is investigating the attack and declined to state if any sensitive data was compromised.
September 2023: Cybercriminals targeted Kuwait’s Ministry of Finance with a phishing ransomware attack. Kuwait isolated the Ministry and other government systems to protect them from potential further attacks.
September 2023: Russian is stepping up cyberattacks against Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, specifically units collecting and analyzing evidence of Russian war crimes, according to Ukrainian officials. Russian cyberattacks have primarily targeted Ukrainian infrastructure for most of the war.
September 2023: Russian forces in occupied Crimea reported a cyberattack on Crimean Internet providers. The attack happened around the same time that a Ukrainian missile strike aimed at Russian naval headquarters in the area. Ukrainian officials have yet to comment.
September 2023: Russian cybercriminals breached the International Criminal Court’s IT systems amid an ongoing probe into Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine.
September 2023: A new Microsoft report indicates an increase of Chinese cyber operations in the South China Sea, as well as increased attacks against the U.S. defense industrial base and U.S. critical infrastructure. The increase comes amid rising tensions between China and the U.S.
September 2023: A Russian ransomware group leaked Australian federal police officers’ details on the dark web. The leak is the latest phase of a Russian attack which started in April 2023 against an Australian law firm that services several Australian government agencies.
September 2023: The iPhone of a Russian journalist for the independent newspaper Meduza was infected with Pegasus spyware in Germany this year. The incident is the first known instance of the spyware being used against a prominent Russian target. The country behind the spyware placement is unknown, but Latvia, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan are all suspects given past use of Pegasus spyware or their allegiance to Russia.
September 2023: Suspected Chinese hackers attacked the national power grid of an unspecified Asian country earlier this year using Chinese malware. The group corrupted a Windows application that allowed them to move laterally within their target’s systems.
September 2023: A ransomware attack wiped four months of Sri Lankan government data. The country’s cloud services system didn’t have backup services available for the data from May 17 to August 26, according to reporting. Malicious actors targeted Sri Lanka’s government cloud system starting in August 2023 by sending infected links to government workers.
September 2023: An Indian cybersecurity firm uncovered plans from Pakistani and Indonesian hacking groups to disrupt the G20 summit in India. The hacktivists are expected to use DDoS attacks and mass defacement in their attacks, which are presumed to be the latest development in the hacktivist battle between these nations according to the firm’s research.
September 2023: Russian hackers stole thousands of documents from the British Ministry of Defense and uploaded them to the dark web. The documents contained accessibility details for a nuclear base in Scotland, high-security prisons, and other national security details. Hackers acquired the documents by breaking into a British fencing developer and gaining backdoor access to Ministry files.
September 2023: Russian cyber criminals accessed sensitive information from South Africa’s Department of Defense, including military contracts and personnel information. The Department reversed its previous statement denying the data leak.
August 2023: Russian hacktivists launched DDoS attacks against Czech banks and the Czech stock exchange. The hackers cut online banking access to the banks’ clients and demanded that the institutions stop supporting Ukraine. Bank representatives claim the hacks did not threaten their clients’ finances.
August 2023: Unnamed hackers took X, formerly known as Twitter, offline in several countries and demanded that owner Elon Musk open Starlink in Sudan. Attackers flooded the server with traffic to disable access for over 20,000 individuals in the U.S., UK, and other countries.
August 2023: Cybercriminals are allegedly selling a stolen dataset from China’s Ministry of State Security. The full data set purportedly includes personal identification information for roughly half a billion Chinese citizens and “classified document[s],” according to the criminals’ post about the sale.
August 2023: Russian hacktivists launched several DDoS attacks that knocked the Polish government’s website offline, as well as the Warsaw Stock exchange and several Polish national banks.
August 2023: Russian hacktivists disabled Poland’s rail systems by gaining access to the system’s railway frequencies and transmitted a malicious signal that halted train operations. Attackers blasted Russia’s national anthem and a speech from Putin on Russia’s military operation in Ukraine during the attack.
August 2023: Chinese hackers targeted a U.S. military procurement system for reconnaissance, along with several Taiwan-based organizations. Attackers targeted high-bandwidth routers to exfiltrate data and establish covert proxy networks within target systems.
August 2023: Ukrainian hackers claim to have broken into the email of a senior Russian politician and leaked medical and financial documents, as well as messages that allegedly connect him to money laundering and sanctions evasion plots.
August 2023: Ecuador’s national election agency claimed that cyberattacks from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Indonesia and China caused difficulties for absentee voters attempting to vote online in the latest election. The agency didn’t elaborate on the nature of the attacks.
August 2023: Suspected North Korean hackers attempted to compromise a joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise on countering nuclear threats from North Korea. Hackers launched several spear phishing email attacks at the exercise’s war simulation center.
August 2023: Bangladesh shut down access to their central bank and election commission websites amid warnings of a planned cyberattack by an Indian hacking group. The shutdown was intended to prevent a cyberattack similar to a 2016 incident in Bangladesh where hackers stole nearly $1 billion, according to the central bank’s statement.
August 2023: Belarusian hackers targeted foreign embassies in the country for nearly a decade, according to new reporting. Hackers disguised malware as Windows updates to get diplomats to download it onto their devices.
August 2023: Chinese hackers obtained personal and political emails of a U.S. Congressman from Nebraska. The hackers exploited the same Microsoft vulnerability that gave them access to emails from the State Department and Department of Commerce.
August 2023: Iranian cyber spies are targeting dissidents in Germany, according to Germany’s domestic intelligence unit. The spies are using false digital personas tailored to victims to build a rapport with their targets before sending a malicious link to a credential harvesting page.
August 2023: Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) claims that Russia’s GRU is attempting to deploy custom malware against Starlink satellites to collect data on Ukrainian troop movements. SBU members discovered malware on Ukrainian tablets that were captured by the Russians before being recovered by Ukrainian forces.
August 2023: Russian hackers launched a ransomware attack against a Canadian government service provider, compromising the data of 1.4 million people in Alberta. The organization paid the ransom and claimed that very little data was lost.
August 2023: A Canadian politician was targeted by a Chinese disinformation campaign on WeChat. The attack included false accusations about the politician’s race and political views. The Canadian government believes the attacks are retaliation against the politician’s criticism of China’s human rights policies.
August 2023: The Canadian government accused a “highly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored actor” of hacking a prominent Canadian federal scientific research agency.
August 2023: Russia’s military intelligence service attempted to hack Ukrainian Armed Forces’ combat information systems. Hackers targeted Android tablets that Ukrainian forces use for planning and orchestrating combat missions.
August 2023: The United Kingdom’s Electoral Commission revealed that Russian hackers breached the commission’s network beginning in August 2021. They obtained information on tens of thousands of British citizens by accessing the commission’s email and file-sharing system.
August 2023: According to a new report, North Korean hackers breached computer systems at a Russian missile developer for five months in 2022. Analysts could not determine what information may have been taken or viewed.
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