Contributors

Jeremiah Grossman
(WhiteHat Security)

Ofer Shezaf
(Breach Security) [Project Leader]

The Web Hacking Incidents Database
Last update:17 February 2008

List of Incidents for a Classification

Please note that classifications are a new feature and not all entries in WHID are already classified, so when you get a certain number of entries for a classification, WHID might have more records matching that classification that we did not classify yet. We hope to complete the classification process soon.

Select classification:
Attack Method, Country, Location, Origin, Outcome, Software, Vertical

Select criteria for classification "Country":
?, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, France, Germany, Global, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Libya, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, UK, United Nations, USA


List of incidents for which Country is USA
57 incidents listed
WHID 2005-65: LexisNexis Data Breach
Reported: 17 February 2008
Occurred: 09 March 2005

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Insufficient Anti-automation
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Information Services

The LexisNexis data breach is not new, but we have recently decided to start tracking abuse of insufficient automation measures and are adding historical incidents.

In this incident a group of people opened accounts at data broker LexisNexis and used automated tools to extract a large amount of personal information provided by the service.

As usual in such cases there is a question of whether the attack was a criminal activity, violation of the license agreement of the information provider or plainly legal. In this regard it is interesting to note that the group arrested in the incident was also responsible for the hacking to Paris Hilton Vodafone account, which was clearly an unlawful act.

Back in 2005 this data breach was one of the first such incidents, generated a lot of media interest, and led to more regulation regarding information aggregators. Interestingly, the excuse given by the company was that the incident was that there was no security failure in the web site, but that the procedures where lacking. We accepted this story at the time, but today we believe that such automation and scraping attacks are among the most dangerous attacks.

References:

WHID 2007-84: Soccer league's online shoppers get kicked by security breach
Reported: 10 February 2008
Occurred: 01 August 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Sports

It is already February, and we still add 2007 incidents. If you wonder why, it is because organizations such as MLS only now find out that they were hacked last year! Sometime between January and August of 2007, names, addresses, credit and debit card data, and passwords of an unknown number of people, including 169 New Hampshire residents were stolen from the site.

Why New Hampshire? Because the company has to report to the authorities there about the incidents, but only specify the number of individuals from this state affected. Why only New Hampshire? Since regulations and bills requiring disclosures exist in many states, one would expect that the company would have to provide such a testimonial in many states. This incident is another good example of the size of the hidden part of the iceberg.

References:

WHID 2008-09: Hacking Stage 6
Reported: 10 February 2008
Occurred: 09 February 2008

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Entertainment

Sensitive information about people who created an account on the site leaked and was published through IRC.

References:

WHID 2008-08: Hacker steals Davidson Cos. clients' data
Reported: 04 February 2008
Occurred: 04 February 2008

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Finance

A computer hacker broke into the database of D.A. Davidson, a local Montana financial services firm and stole their entire customers' database: 226,000 records including names and social security numbers. Attack method is not known, but it seems very much like a web hack.

References:

WHID 2007-83: More Social Security numbers leaked at Montana State University
Reported: 28 January 2008
Occurred: 07 November 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Administration Error
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

Again a Microsoft Excel file was left on a University's web site for anyone to view.

References:

WHID 2008-07: Another Free MacWorld Platinum Pass? Yes in 2008!
Reported: 28 January 2008
Occurred: 14 January 2008

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Brute Force
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Monetary Loss
  • Vertical: Technology

Kurt already got his free MacWorld pass last year (WHID 2007-14), but it seems that nothing changes year after year and he was able to pull a similar trick this year. As the codes that allow customers to get the passes where hashed but stored on the client browser, Kurt was able to crack them.

References:

WHID 2008-06: Hackers Take Down Pennsylvania Government
Reported: 28 January 2008
Occurred: 06 January 2008

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Planting of Malware
  • Outcome: Defacement
  • Vertical: Government

You dfon

References:

WHID 2008-04: RIAA web site cleared
Reported: 22 January 2008
Occurred: 20 January 2008

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Attack Method: Denial of Service
  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: Global
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Defacement
  • Outcome: Downtime
  • Outcome: Defacement
  • Vertical: Entertainment

The web site of RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America was attacked twice using SQL injection over the weekend. First a query that takes particularly long time was posted on a social network web site causing a distributed denial of service attack against the site. Later on hackers found and abused additional SQL injection and XSS vulnerabilities resulting in major defacement of the site.

References:

WHID 2008-03: FTC settles with a retailer for lack of reasonable security
Reported: 19 January 2008
Occurred: 19 January 2008

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Disclosure Only
  • Vertical: Retail

An SQL injection vulnerability that could result in a hacker being able to access credit card numbers, expiration dates, and security codes of thousands of consumers was discovered in the web site of retailer "life is good".

The US Federal Trade Commission charged "life is good" with lack of reasonable and appropriate security for the sensitive consumer information stored on its servers. The company's settlement with the company requires the company to accept a very comprehensive and costly security procedure going forward.

References:

WHID 2008-01: Information stolen from geeks.com
Reported: 08 January 2008
Occurred: 05 January 2008

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Retail

Very detailed records of geeks.com customers were stolen from the site. The records included name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card number, expiration date, and most notoriously, card verification number (CVV).

The interesting part is that the site had a Hacker Safe seal. The seal was revoked twice last year due to vulnerabilities, but restored after they where patched. It seems that this time the hack preceded the scan or the scan missed the vulnerability. So much for application scanning and vulnerability assessment....

And don't take it lightly as a geeks site. Geeks.com is a $150M/year business.

References:

WHID 2007-79: Infamous Russian malware gang used SQL injection to penetrate US government sites
Reported: 01 January 2008
Occurred: 09 November 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: Brazil
  • Country: USA
  • Origin: Russia
  • Outcome: Planting of Malware
  • Vertical: Government

RBN was a big story. It was a hackers group that could work relatively freely in Russia due to rumors connections in high windows. This way it could allow safe hosting for malware. For getting people to the malware they penetrated web sites around the world, and the references article mentioned SQL injection as the method they infiltrated more high profile sites such as US government sites.

References:

WHID 2007-77: HostGator: cPanel Security Hole Exploited in Mass Hack
Reported: 01 January 2008
Occurred: 23 September 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Known Vulnerability
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Planting of Malware
  • Software: cPanel
  • Vertical: Service Providers

Hackers exploited an unknown cPanel vulnerability to break into HostGator servers and plant malware on hosted sites.

References:

WHID 2007-76: A large web hosting firm inflicted by mass malware installation
Reported: 01 January 2008
Occurred: 23 May 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Known Vulnerability
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Planting of Malware
  • Software: cPanel
  • Vertical: Service Providers

The Washington Post ran a story about a large scale infiltration to IPower, a major hosting provider. According to the story and the following comments, it seems that the problem is plunging IPower for a long time without being resolved. Put in perspective the PlusNet incident which was serious but swiftly handled and publicly acknowledged by the company.

Actually the problem is so dominant that a recent StopBadware report lists Ipower as by far the most Malware infected hosting company. Reports mention that the problem started as early as mid 2006.

The root cause of the breach here is mentioned as being a vulnerability in either Apache, PHP or cPanel. I have selected the third as being more probably until further evidence materialize.

References:

WHID 2007-74: Web host breach may have exposed passwords for 6,000 clients
Reported: 01 January 2008
Occurred: 17 September 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Known Vulnerability
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Software: Cerberus Helpdesk
  • Vertical: Service Providers

A known vulnerability in the helpdesk software used by hosting provider Layered Technologies resulted in leakage of information, including names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of up to 6,000 of the company's clients.

References:

WHID 2007-71: Hacker uses Social Security numbers from Ohio court site
Reported: 22 December 2007
Occurred: 22 December 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Credential/Session Prediction
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Monetary Loss
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Outcome: Identity Theft
  • Vertical: Security & Law Enforcement

The Secret Service has arrested at least 6 people in an investigation that involves information theft at an Ohio court web site, which is actively used for identity theft. At least one known identity theft case resulted in $40,000 loss to the victim.

The sensitive information was stolen by manipulating predictable identifier parameters. The stolen information belong to at least 270 people and includes the name, address, age and other information could be used to obtain credit cards and open bank accounts.

References:

WHID 2007-70: Tucson, Arizona police web site defaced using SQL injection
Reported: 20 December 2007
Occurred: 20 December 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: USA
  • Origin: Indonesia
  • Outcome: Defacement
  • Vertical: Security & Law Enforcement

Just like WHID 2007-60, this hack is probably a representative of many other incidents. The Indonesian hacker Hmei7 has left the message "Hmei7 has touched your soul" on the Web site of the police department in Tucson, Arizona. Only unlike regular defacement, this time it is not the front page but rather the news section that was modified.

As many you know, the news section is one of the few database driven parts in many mostly static sites, as it allows the site owner to add news without requiring a web designer. Therefore it came as no surprise that the attack was identified by a public source as an SQL injection attack.

References:

WHID 2007-65: Facebook suing a porn site over automated access
Reported: 19 December 2007
Occurred: 28 June 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Insufficient Anti-automation
  • Country: USA
  • Country: Canada
  • Vertical: Internet

Use of robots and automated software against a web site, as long as it is not done in order to break into the site, falls into a grey area. While hard to classify as an unlawful act, it is usually harmful to the site owner and possibly to the site users. Apart from using valuable resources, such an automated access may breach the site's usage license of public information and might also indicate unlawful activity such as using a botnet. Many times it is hard to know if such a blast of requests is a denial of service attack, brute force password cracking or just a search engine crawler.

Going forward we are going to add such incidents to WHID if there is a reason to believe that they are not friendly, even if the actual goal of the attack cannot be easily classified. The Facebook case at hand is a perfect example: while the details are not clear, the fact that Facebook filed a law suit implies that there is fire behind the smoke.

References:

WHID 2007-61: Another inconvenient truth: Al Gore's Web site hacked
Reported: 19 December 2007
Occurred: 26 November 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Known Vulnerability
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Link Spam
  • Software: WordPress
  • Vertical: Politics

Whether comment spam by itself is an application failure or a necessary evil for site allowing rich comments is an open question. However it is reported that in this case vulnerability in WordPress allowed the spammers to actually penetrate the site and modify pages and not just abuse comments.

References:

WHID 2007-64: Information about Duke's Students and Applicants Stolen
Reported: 19 December 2007
Occurred: 01 December 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

The personal data of nearly 1,400 prospective Duke Law School students may have been stolen by a hacker from two separate databases, one including the prospective students' data and another filled with requests for information about the school.

References:

WHID 2007-69: The Orkut XSS Worm
Reported: 19 December 2007
Occurred: 19 December 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Worm
  • Vertical: Internet

A vulnerability in the social networking site Orkut that allowed users to inject HTML and JavaScript into their profiles set the stage for a persistent XSS worm that appears to have affected more than 650,000 Orkut users.

References:

WHID 2007-59: Hackers jack Monster.com, infect job hunters
Reported: 21 November 2007
Occurred: 20 November 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Planting of Malware
  • Vertical: Internet

A Crimeware iframe tag on a site is not news anymore. On Monster.com it is.

References:

WHID 2005-64: Woman scammed QVC for $400,000+ in Internet glitch
Reported: 20 November 2007
Occurred: 01 March 2005

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Abuse of Functionality
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Monetary Loss

A woman exploited a bug in QVC shopping network web site to get, without paying, more than 1800 items worth $412,000 items from the March to November 2005. The glitch enabled her to cancel orders she placed at a specific time and still get the product.

References:

WHID 2007-56: TJMaxx XSS Vulnerability
Reported: 07 November 2007
Occurred: 23 September 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Disclosure Only
  • Vertical: Retail

A small XSS vulnerably caught RSnake eyes. What makes it different, after all xssed.com lists thousands and thousands of those? What caught RSnames eyes was the vulnerable site. TJMaxx earned the reputation as the company that suffered the biggest security breach ever. You would expect them to be more careful.

References:

WHID 2007-58: Internet Retailer Publisher Victim of Customer File Hack
Reported: 07 November 2007
Occurred: 18 September 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Media

Vertical Web Media, publisher of Internet Retailer magazine, suffered a security http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/17/gentoo_disconnects_vulnerable_server/breach and credit card information of readers had been stolen. The Irony is that Internet Retailed magazine is covering the risks of e-commerce.

While the actual technique used is not known, signs are that it was a web hack as it was done by a distributed network of bots all over the world and since the information stolen belonged to customers who paid online.

The information stolen includes names, addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, credit card account numbers and card expiration dates. The number of records stolen is unknown.

References:

WHID 2007-51: 570 Scarborough & Tweed customers' personal information accessed by SQL injection
Reported: 04 November 2007
Occurred: 30 September 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Retail

The web servers of Scarborough & Tweed, a company that does business online selling corporate gifts online, were compromised and information about 570 customers may have been accessed using an SQL injection attack. The information includes customers' names, addresses, telephone numbers, account numbers, and credit card numbers.

References:

WHID 2007-49: Hackers Block Sale of Colorado Rockies World Series Tickets
Reported: 25 October 2007
Occurred: 23 October 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Denial of Service
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Loss of Sales
  • Vertical: Sports

The site of the Rockies was taken down by a denial of service preventing fans from buying tickets for the World Series games.

Like any DDoS attack, it is very hard to know if it was an application layer or network layer attack, but since this attack had a very significant financial impact by crippling a web site, we think it deserve a place in WHID.

References:

WHID 2007-48: MSU investigating hacking incident
Reported: 17 October 2007
Occurred: 09 October 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

Information including birth date and social security number of 1400 students who enrolled online to the Montana State University has been stolen by hackers. While no technical explanation is provided, the fact that only students who enrolled online where affected points to a web site breach.

References:

WHID 2007-47: Commerce Bank, a US regional bank, hacked
Reported: 12 October 2007
Occurred: 10 October 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Finance

3,000 records were exposed and 20 actually stolen at Commerce Bank, a small bank in Central USA. While the vulnerability exploited is not clear, SQL injection was mentioned. Therefore the record is uncertain and based on further information, it might be withdrawn.

References:

WHID 2007-46: School Web site breached? Personal info of Pembroke workers, volunteers accessible for months
Reported: 11 October 2007
Occurred: 02 October 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

Personal information on anyone who worked or volunteered for the Pembroke schools in the last four years was accessible via the Internet because of a weakness in the district's computer system. The information, including names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, was available from May until Oct. 2, when school officials learned of the problem.

References:

WHID 2007-44: Hacker Breaks Into eBay Server, Locks Users Out
Reported: 10 October 2007
Occurred: 06 October 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Insufficient Authentication
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Loss of Sales
  • Vertical: Retail

A hacker exploited a leftover admin function on eBay to block users and close sales.

References:

WHID 2007-40: County's Web site hacked; no data lost
Reported: 02 September 2007
Occurred: 20 August 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Known Vulnerability
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Defacement
  • Vertical: Government

Defacements seem to dominate the list recently, probably because they reach everywhere. Two important conclusions from this particular one are that patch management is a key problem and that it is a problem mainly at government sites across the world.

References:

WHID 2007-35: Data lapse involved 51,000 at a hospital
Reported: 30 July 2007
Occurred: 25 July 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Insufficient Authentication
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Health

In a classic case of lack of proper separation between the production and development sites, an application under production with lack of proper authentication and authorization was installed on a hospital's public web site, enabling anyone to query a database of 51,000 names, addresses and social security numbers.

References:

WHID 2007-34: Fox News leaks secret files
Reported: 25 July 2007
Occurred: 23 July 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Media

Fox News left non public files on a directory accessible to everyone on their web server.

References:

WHID 2007-28: US Embassy probes hacking of online visa appointment system
Reported: 17 June 2007
Occurred: 13 June 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Insufficient Authentication
  • Country: Jamaica
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Deceit
  • Vertical: Government

If you live in a country from which you need a Visa to get to the states, you knew this would happen. The US online Visa appointment system is very open. Indeed too open. Someone in Jamaica took advantage of this to pre-allocate appointments.

While this might be classified as a business process design flaw, isn't security also about this?

References:

WHID 2007-23: Office of Nation's Top Spy Inadvertently Reveals Key to Classified National Intel Budget
Reported: 12 June 2007
Occurred: 03 June 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Security & Law Enforcement

A spreadsheet left on the web site of the US office of national intelligence includes secret information on the total budget of the US intelligence. Interestingly the not all the required information appears in the document, but combined with other pieces of information made available prior, the total number can be calculated.

This is a very interesting example of the sensitivity of partial data or small pieces of information and not just the big secrets.

References:

WHID 2007-24: Hackers access personal info on faculty members at Univ. of Virginia
Reported: 12 June 2007
Occurred: 19 April 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

An undisclosed vulnerability in a web application at the University of Virginia allowed hackers to access names, social security numbers and birth dates of faculty members from May 2005 until April of 2007. Approximately 5700 records where stolen in 54 distinct break-ins.

References:

WHID 2007-25: University of Iowa Molecular and Cellular Biology Program Security Incident
Reported: 12 June 2007
Occurred: 19 May 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

Approximately 1100 students and faculty members' personal information records which includes social security numbers were exposed by a vulnerable web application at the Molecular and Cellular Biology program at the University of Iowa. The report suggests that the application was actually compromised.

References:

WHID 2007-26: $1,000,000 CNBC stock trading contest hacked
Reported: 12 June 2007
Occurred: 11 June 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Insufficient Anti-automation
  • Attack Method: Insufficient Session Expiration
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Deceit
  • Vertical: Media

The CNBC stock trading reality TV show was even more real than contenders thought it would be. It seems that players learned to cheat the game by opening a browser form to by a stock before closing and issuing the transaction, at the set price, only after closing, when more information is already available.

The interesting anecdote is that the person who discovered the issue has used a different, but also questionable technique of maintaining a very large number of portfolios automatically managed by automated programs using the fact that the game allowed a user to have any number of portfolios but only the best one is counted. Kosher, but stinks.

This story remind an older story about a predictable delay in a poker game that enabled gamblers to beat the house.

References:

WHID 2007-27: Files From Google On the Streets
Reported: 12 June 2007
Occurred: 30 May 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Internet

Google left some files at the wrong place at the wrong time. These files includes, surprisingly, database connection strings, including a user name and a password. Hardly news, but this time it is Google.

References:

WHID 2007-19: Hacker accessed data at University of Missouri
Reported: 09 May 2007
Occurred: 08 May 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

A report within the help desk system used to track the status of open service calls created a file that was a accessible to everyone. A hacker abused the problem to get information regarding 22,000 current and former students.

References:

WHID 2007-18: Microsoft.com defaced
Reported: 06 May 2007
Occurred: 03 May 2005

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: SQL Injection
  • Country: USA
  • Origin: Saudi Arabia
  • Outcome: Defacement
  • Vertical: Technology

This incredible story from our friends at Zone-H shed light on one of those defacement attacks, which usually go unexplained. This time an infamous Saudi-Arabian hacker abused SQL injection vulnerability in Internet Explorer Administration Kit web site. And guess what type of SQL injection: A login form SQL injection!

References:

WHID 2007-16: USDA admits data breach, thousands of social security numbers revealed
Reported: 23 April 2007
Occurred: 23 April 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Government

Details about 63,000 loans granted to farmers by USDA (The US department of agriculture) where posted online by mistake.

References:

WHID 2007-15: High School Hackers Cancel School With Fake Snow Day
Reported: 05 April 2007
Occurred: 09 February 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Insufficient Authentication
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Defacement
  • Vertical: Education

Two girls modified a schools home page by adding a note that school was closed due to a snow storm. The attack was probably done using a rouge admin accounts.

References:

WHID 2007-14: Your Free MacWorld Expo Platinum Pass
Reported: 02 April 2007
Occurred: 11 January 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Credential/Session Prediction
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Loss of Sales
  • Vertical: Technology

A priority code, used to get free platinum pass to MacWorld Expo, was validated on the client and enabled anyone get the pass for free. While "grutz" informed the organizers about it, when going over their log files they found out that others abused the vulnerability without letting anyone know about it.

References:

WHID 2007-13: Hackers hit Georgia Tech and steal personal info
Reported: 02 April 2007
Occurred: 21 February 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

The personal information of about 3,000 current and former Georgia Tech employees may have been compromised. The informatoin included names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other sensitive information, including about 400 state purchasing card numbers.

References:

WHID 2007-10: Super Bowl Site Hacked with Trojan, Key logger
Reported: 30 March 2007
Occurred: 02 February 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Planting of Malware
  • Vertical: Sports

Hackers penetrated the Dolphins stadium web site just days before the Super Bowl was held there and modified the home page to include a Trojan inflecting script.

References:

WHID 2007-06: Hackers swipe seed company's customers' data
Reported: 29 March 2007
Occurred: 18 February 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Identity Theft
  • Outcome: Monetary Loss
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Retail

11,500 credit card numbers have been stolen from the web site of Johnny's Selected Seeds a small ($13M in revenue per annum) on line vendor of seeds in Main. 20 of these are known to have been abused. As usual, the hack was discovered because of fraudulent use of stolen credit cards rather than security measures used protect the web site.

The direct cost of the breach, informing customers, researching the incident and upgrading the protection of the web site cost the company tens of thousands of dollars.

References:

WHID 2007-05: Hacking John McCain
Reported: 29 March 2007
Occurred: 27 March 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Misconfiguration
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Defacement
  • Vertical: Politics

An open source developer virtually defaced John McCain's MySpace page. He did not have to commit any crime, because the page pulled an image directly from the open source developer's site.

References:

WHID 2007-07: Westerly Hospital data breach affects 2,000
Reported: 29 March 2007
Occurred: 02 March 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Health

Personal information about 2,000 patients was mistakenly published on the hospital's web site. The leakage was discovered only when a patient found her information when "Googling" herself.

The information included personal data such as social security numbers, birth dates, address, phone number, insurance numbers and in some cases the reason for the visit.

References:

WHID 2007-09: Former Fruit of the Loom workers' identities compromised
Reported: 29 March 2007
Occurred: 23 February 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Retail

Names and social security numbers of former employees of Fruit of the Loom where available for download from the company's web site.

References:

WHID 2007-04: College glitch avails student information to public
Reported: 27 March 2007
Occurred: 10 March 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

A student at a community college in Sacramento who was "Googling" himself last month found his name, among 2000 others, in a file accidentally left by school staff online and picked by Google crawler.

References:

WHID 2007-01: Credit Card Information stolen from Indiana's Web Site
Reported: 26 March 2007
Occurred: 03 January 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unknown
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Government

On January 3, a hacker broke into Indiana's government web site and made off with personal information for 71,000 health care aides who obtained certifications from the state, as well as 5,600 credit card numbers from people who had paid the state through the IN.gov web site.

While officials in Indiana tried to write it off as a harmless prank played by a teenager, the U.S. Department of Justice has also been investigating the case, and they believe the same hacker is responsible for attempts on other state government web sites.

References:

WHID 2007-03: UI put staff data on Web
Reported: 26 March 2007
Occurred: 10 March 2007

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Unintentional Information Disclosure
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information
  • Vertical: Education

Personal information for about 2,700 University of Idaho employees was inadvertently posted at the school's Web site for 19 days in February, though officials say it was not easy to access and there's no reason yet to believe it was misused.

References:

WHID 1999-1: eBay downplays security hole
Reported: 04 April 2006
Occurred: 19 April 1999

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Disclosure Only

A very early XSS issue at eBay. Interesting historically as it seems that at the time the term XSS was not yet in use.

References:

WHID 2004-11: Phishers Manipulate SunTrust Site to Steal Data
Reported:
Occurred: 28 September 2004

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Phishing
  • Vertical: Finance

Phishing based on XSS

References:

WHID 2000-4: Sensitive files left unprotected on Western Union's Web
Reported:
Occurred: 10 September 2000

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Misconfiguration
  • Attack Method: Failure to Restrict URL Access
  • Country: USA

Sensitive files were left in a publicly accessible directory during a maintenance window

References:

WHID 2000-3: Gaffe at Amazon leaves email addresses exposed
Reported:
Occurred: 06 September 2000

Classifications:

  • Attack Method: Abuse of Functionality
  • Country: USA
  • Outcome: Leakage of Information

E-mail addresses of other customers displayed by mistake, no hacking was required

References:



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