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.
June 2024: Japan’s space agency has suffered a series of cyberattacks since last year, according to the Japanese government. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary claimed the targeted networks did not contain sensitive rocket or satellite information, and that the attackers were “from outside of Japan.”
June 2024: Hackers deployed ransomware in Indonesia’s national data center which briefly disrupted a variety of immigration services, including immigration document management services at airports, and deleted information that was not backed up. The attack prompted Indonesia’s Director General of Informatics Applications at the Communications and Informatics Ministry to resign and initiated and a nation-wide audit of Indonesia’s national data centers.
June 2024: Belarusian state-sponsored hackers launched an espionage campaign Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense and a Ukrainian military base. The attackers sent targets phishing emails with drone image files a malicious Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
June 2024: Germany’s main opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union, suffered a cyberattack just ahead of European Parliamentary elections. Germany’s interior ministry did not disclose the extend of the attack or the suspected perpetrator, but acknowledged it was “serious.” The attack occurred shortly after Germany’s Social Democratic party was attacked by Russian hackers. The party briefly took down parts of its IT service as a precaution.
June 2024: The government of Palau accused Chinese hackers of stealing over 20,000 government documents shortly after the island nation signed a 20-year economic and security deal with the United States in March 2024. Palau’s president said this was the first major attack on government records that the island has seen.
May 2024: A new report from Canada’s Communications Security Establishment detected Chinese espionage activity against eight members of Parliament and one senator starting in 2021. The spies likely attempted to obtain information from the targets’ personal and work devices but were unsuccessful, according to the report. The Parliamentarians were members of Canada’s Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which focuses on how democracies should approach PRC-related issues. The report also mentioned this activity was similar to activity against 19 European countries dating back to 2020.
May 2024: Recent media reports stated Pakistani cyber spies deployed malware against India’s government, aerospace, and defense sectors. The group sent phishing emails masquerading as Indian defense officials to infect their targets’ devices and access sensitive information. The attack’s extent is unknown.
May 2024: Chinese hackers hit Britain’s Ministry of Defense with a cyberattack that exposed sensitive information on every troop apart from the UK’s special forces. The attackers targeted a third-party contractor to access names and bank details of current and former members of the armed forces. The UK Minister of Defence stopped short of publicly naming China as the culprit.
May 2024: Poland and the Czech Republic accused Russian cyber spies of targeting government and infrastructure networks. Both countries claim the attacks occurred around the same time Russian hackers attacked the German government. Hackers gained access by exploited a Microsoft Outlook vulnerability, and the extent of the compromised data is currently unknown.
May 2024: Germany accused Russian hackers of breaking into the emails of Germany’s Social Democrats, the leading party in its governing coalition, and recalled its ambassador from the country. The campaign started in March 2022 when hackers exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Outlook to target the party’s executive committee, as well as German defense and aerospace companies.
April 2024: Ukraine’s military intelligence agency launch a cyberattack against Russia’s ruling United Russia party the same day Russia hosted its Victory Dictation. Attackers launched a barrage of DDoS attacks against United Russia’s servers, websites, and domains to make them inaccessible. United Russia publicly admitted to suffering from a “massive” DDoS attack.
April 2024: Belarusian pro-democracy hackers, known as the Belarusian Cyber-Partisans, crippled the website of Belarus’ main security service agency for over two months. The hackers also published a list of website administrators, its database, and server logs on its Telegram channel. This is the latest in a series of attacks against the Belarusian government by the group.
April 2024: Police in the United Kingdom are investigating a series of “honey trap” attacks against British MPs. Attackers sent explicit messages allegedly of themselves over WhatsApp to their target for the apparent purpose of acquiring compromising images of the target. The perpetrators of these attacks are currently unknown.
April 2024: Germany plans to create a cyber military branch as part of its military restructuring. Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, stated the new Cyber and Information Domain Service (CIR) would help deter increasing cyber aggression from Russia against Germany and its NATO allies.
April 2024: Hackers attacked El Salvador’s national cryptocurrency wallet Chivo and exposed over 144 GB of sensitive personal information of millions of Salvadorians. The hackers also released Chivo’s source code publicly. The Salvadorian government has not released an official public statement on the attack.
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