Jun 20
Los 5 ciberataques más importantes en lo que llevamos de año

The 5 Most Important Cyberattacks Of The First Half Of 2017

Over the next few years 34 billion devices will connect to the Internet. Hypothetically, in this scenario, each human being on the Earth would have more than four devices. That should concern all of us because all those devices that will have Internet connection will be the targets of cyberattacks.

2016 was a vital year in the fight against cybercrime. With the advent of the Internet, public and private institutions started to invest part of their resources in protecting themselves from cyber threats. Despite there being more security awareness, in the last six months, we saw that businesses and individuals did not take enough steps to protect their data.

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Computer security experts say that the attacks we have seen this year are samples of what is coming. Moreover, these experts point out that the next attacks will be worse than ever. The reason is that hackers don’t stop innovating their intrusion techniques. Ransomware, adware, scareware or phishing attacks are just some of the threats which hit organisations daily.

What happened these last six months about cybersecurity that should concern us? Let’s see which attacks made the headlines and affected the majority of people in 2017.

1. Phishing Attack On Gmail Users

Media and technology blogs informed that this attack was very “sophisticated” because of the way it infected users accounts. In May, a group of cybercriminals launched an attack to control the email accounts of Gmail users. They achieved it, as they infected a million accounts (0.1% of Gmail users, according to Google).

Hackers employed a popular technique called phishing. It is a type of social engineering where attackers try to impersonate a trusted person or entity to obtain insider information or privileges.

The attack started when Gmail users received an email informing that a “known contact” has shared a document with them. If they wanted to see it, they had to click on “Open in Docs” and chose the Gmail account to read the file.

In the next GIF, you will see that there was a screen where users had to give permissions to a random application to open the file. When users clicked on “Allow”, then the attack was successful.

After taking control of Gmail accounts, attackers gathered personal information about their victims, like contact names and email content. Google did not take a long time to delete the phishing app. However, it was recommended to revoke permissions through this link: https://myaccount.google.com/permissions If you click on it, you may be surprised at the number of applications that you have given access to your information.

2. Judy Might Be One Of Biggest Attacks On Android Devices

In May, some researchers at Check Point discovered a virus called Judy. This malware might have affected a large amount of devices: between 8.5 and 36 million smartphones and tablets.

Some people think that the virus was created and extended by South Korea hackers from a company called Kiniwini. Judy developers uploaded almost fifty gaming applications on Google Play like: “Fashion Judy: Snow Queen Style”, “Animal Judy: Persian Cat Car” or “Chef Judy: Picnic Lunch Maker”

Example of one of the Judy apps that inffected Android devices

The majority of these applications have a good reputation on Google Play, as they were available over several years. That is why between 4 and 18 millions of Judy applications were downloaded. Undoubtedly, popularity does not mean safeness.

When a user downloaded and installed some of the Judy games, the application connected with a website, and there it clicked on adds to make money for hackers. All this happen without the knowledge of users.

For some reason, the Judy virus was found in applications of other developers, not only in Kiniwini projects. From the moment the virus was discovered, Google withdrew all applications of Judy from Google Play.

3. Attacking Democracy

There was a time where people trusted the democratic process, but cybercrime arrived. Some attackers look for profits by damaging businesses and organisations. Some others want to hit institutions and change the fate of societies. That is what seemed to happen in the United States.

Contrary to opinion polls, on 9th November 2016, Donald Trump took over the White House. Even today, there are people who doubt if that presidential election was fair.

It might be because some classified documents went public and suggested that Russia hacked US voting system machines before the election. According to The NSA, the Putin Administration also attacked staff members of the electoral process by spear-phishing (a kind of attack where hackers try to access sensitive data).

NSA report about hacking U.S. election of 2016

 

The document of the NSA does not make clear if those attacks were a success or if they influenced the election results somehow. However, that is not the only thing happened when it comes to attacking democracies. The Kremlin is once again in the spotlight because of interferences in the French election. Some emails of the centre party En Marche! went public and a range of fake news about Emmanuel Macron was published too, as they were released with the purpose of damaging his name.

The objective was to interfere in the battle between Macron and Le Pen. According to the cybersecurity firm, Trend Micro, the authors of these cyberattacks were a Russian group called Pawn Storm.

They wanted to boost the presidential candidacy of Marine Le Pen, as she is a supporter of the policies of the Putin government. Moreover, last March, Le Pen visited Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin, so the impartiality of The Kremlin is called into question, based on the above.

Germany is also getting ready for potential cyberattacks in the next general election which will be in September of this year. German security agencies have indications that Russia might manage these cyberattacks on institutions, politicians and members of the executive for the purpose of disturbing the elections through disinformation and discredit campaigns by publishing fake news.

Although these cyberattacks are aimed at political parties, their effects are huge. After all, attackers want to change voting intention in favour of someone whose victory might not follow the genuine interests of a society. The worst part is that we will never know how successful these attacks are at influencing the results and, therefore, the fate of a country.

4. Third Hack To Yahoo Users

Recently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a report about the investigation of the third hack on Yahoo. It says that 32 million users accounts were hacked. The research, performed between November and December 2016, concluded that attackers employed a method called the cookie-forging attack.

It consists of the insertion of a SQL query via the input data from the user to the application. A successful injection can read and modify sensitive data. Also, attackers can operate as an administrator of the database. In Yahoo’s case, these fake cookies allowed attackers to access user accounts without providing access details.

The fact is that these cyberattacks were between 2015 and 2016 and now they went public. The reason for the SEC’s investigation is because big U.S. companies must inform when they are attacked, as cyberattacks might affect stock prices. The issue is that Yahoo took a lot of time to report the first and second attacks, and if the company do not justify the reason for this, the SEC might make a claim.

On the part of Yahoo, its CEO Marissa Mayer announced on her Tumblr that the issue is critical, so they started to solve the security breach.

5. WannaCry, The Ransomware Which Shook The World

If you search “cyberattacks of 2017” on Google, you will realise that the ransomware which hit dozens of companies on 12th May made more headlines than other attacks. It is estimated that the developers of WannaCry just raised 20,000 dollars. However, we should not downplay its impact considering what is coming.

Security experts expect that the frequency of cyberattacks and their impact will be worse. In that situation, businesses and organisations will have severe losses if they don’t take security steps as soon as possible.

In cybersecurity, prevention is the best weapon, and nowadays we have lots of tools that go beyond installing an antivirus or a firewall. There are services like network security, server security, penetration testing and training of your employees to protect your business against attackers. If you let us help your business, you will avoid being the next victim of cybercriminals.

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