... just when you thought it was safe to go back into the web!
1. NY Times Endures Chinese based cyber attack for monthsFor four months, Chinese hackers persistently attacked The New York Times, breaching its computer systems and stealing passwords for its reporters and other employees. Ironically, these attacks on the NY Times network security first surfaced in October 2012 when the Times was investigating China’s Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao and his relatives for wrongfully accumulating his billion dollar fortune. The cyber hack was orchestrated by installing malware onto the company’s computers.
2. US Federal Reserve gets hacked in response to Aaron Swartz suicideIn early February, The US Federal Reserve Bank confirmed one of its internal websites had incurred a data breach by the hacktivist group “Anonymous”. The initial network security scare involved stolen personal information of more than 4,000 bank executives. “Anonymous” reported publishing all the personal data of these 4,000 bank executives using a Twitter account registered to OpLastResort, which has also allegedly has wreaked cyber security breaches on other business and government websites.
3. Twitter Suffers Cyber Attack In February, Twitter came forward to announce they were the latest site to suffer a breach of their network security. The social network said that approximately 250,000 Twitter user accounts were potentially compromised. The breach of Twitter’s network security involved gaining access to personal identifiable information including user names and email addresses. Twitter IT security technicians were able to detect unusual access patterns that led to them toward identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data.
4.Yahoo! Mail Hacked After Video Uploaded on YouTubeYahoo Mail users have been seeing their accounts broken into for months. Though Yahoo has reported fixing the hacking issue several times, there is still a reported rise in the number of compromised accounts. Yahoo’s network security breaches have been documented for some time. What makes this cyber attack unique is that it seems to stem from a YouTube video uploaded by Shahin Ramezany.
5. South Korean Broadcasts and Banks Hacked In early March, South Korean authorities investigated a hacking attack that brought down the servers of three broadcasters and two major banks. The army rapidly raised its alert level due to its suspicions that North Korea may be involved. Network servers at television stations YTN, MBC and KBS were affected as well as two major banks, Shinhan Bank and NongHyup Bank.
