Highlighting Various Articles

Some of these items are a bit dated but I thought I'd showcase them in case you missed them like I did.

10 Most Significant Hacks in 2013 by Nextgov (Jan 2014)

Nextgov website publishes list of what they deem as the "...10 most significant infiltrations reported in 2013 as far as damage to national security, economic security and privacy."(#1)

The titles from their list.  See link to article for details.

1. An unauthorized user gained access to an Army database of U.S. dams that documented the number of people who would be killed in the event of a collapse.

2. A suspected government-sponsored Chinese hacking team allegedly penetrated a decoy U.S. water utility.

3. The prolonged surveillance of New York Times reporters that Bejtlich’s firm helped uncover.

4. During a fall summit in St. Petersburg, G20 heads of state and staff allegedly received tainted thumb drives and smartphone chargers from their Russian hosts.

5. North Korea was blamed for paralyzing the networks running South Korean banks and television stations.

6. Ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed a cache of government secrets documenting mass domestic surveillance and intercepts of foreign allies' emails and phone calls.

7. A hijacked Associated Press Twitter feed describing explosions at the White House briefly -- but significantly -- affected financial markets.

8. The Energy Department's inspector general lambasted officials for sluggishness in responding to a breach that ultimately affected 104,000 federal employees.

9. Adobe acknowledged the theft of 2.9 million customer records as well as valuable software code. The targeted goods included many software tools used by federal agencies, such as Adobe Acrobat and ColdFusion.

10. During the height of the holiday shopping season, cyber thieves nicked credit and debit card data from up to 40 million in-store Target customers.

Article link:
http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2013/12/ten-worst-hacks-2013/76049/

Footnotes:
#1 - This quote and titles in 1-10 items above quoted from article called "Ten Worst Hacks of 2013" by Nextgov.com; Link: above

Neiman Marcus Hackers Set Off Thousands of Alerts While Bagging Credit Card Data (Feb 2014)

The Neiman Marcus attackers set off 60,000 security alerts during their attack.  That number is HUGE.  This occurred during the 3.5 month attack timeline.  IMO, this is why you need people monitoring logs along with machines, and not just depending on machines only.

Article link:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-21/neiman-marcus-hackers-set-off-60-000-alerts-while-bagging-credit-card-data

Microsoft opens new Cybercrime Center in Redmond, WA USA (Nov 2013)

Quotes from the articles:
"Advancing the fight against cybercrime to protect consumers and make the Internet safe"
"It's a world-class laboratory where a seasoned team of cybercrime investigators engage in a high-stakes game of chess, trying to stay a move or two ahead of the world’s most odious Internet criminals in an effort to make the web a safer place."

Article link: (with a good number of pictures including cybercrime heat maps)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/stories/cybercrime/index.html
http://www.microsoft.com/government/ww/safety-defense/initiatives/Pages/cybercrime-center.aspx