It is 2015

== 10/01/2015 ==

December 2014 has become the most active month for hacking and international hacking activity with escalations with the digital battles between US Government Organisations & allies, such as UK Government Organisations

The receiver of the heightened digital activities of the U.S. & UK was North Korea (DRNK)

Split this up into two super headings

The Start of all of the extra International network traffic

The Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. Hack

Sony's entire network was compromised by a disgruntled (ex) employee or group of hackers who breached many or all levels of security to gain access to the entire data centre.

The next James Bond film was a high profile target, a very early script was retrieved and published for all to see on 4chan for 24 hours, until the forum is reset/wiped.

Sony Pictures have issued a threat to take legal action against anybody involved in the hack

The BBC reported how Sony will take the information from the FBI and use it in building a case to resolve this issue in the courts.

Releasing Data in the Public Domain

Not exactly what I would call the public domain; some documents were redistributed on 4chan followed by Reddit, but a lot of the documents were not distributed on 4chan or Reddit.

Of the 100 TeraBytes (plus) of data stolen from Sony Pictures, only a small amount has been released to date; the majority of this has been released on North Korean servers, where North Koreans are the only people who are able to upload to these servers. BBC

Massive Damage at German Steel Works

Germany is Furious

Germany responded to being severely hacked in one particular place with emphatic reactions.
Threats were issued and loosely retracted later, but the Germans are very annoyed.

Hack attack causes "MASSIVE DAMAGE" at steel works

Source: BBC & lots of twitter accounts including BBC News Twitter

BSI Annual Report

A blast furnace at a German steel mill suffered "massive damage" following a cyber attack on the plant's network, as details of the incident emerged in the annual report of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

Ukraine thinks Russia

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk did not hold back when asked about the recent hack attack

Ukraine's prime minister has blamed the Russian secret service for a hack attack against German government websites.

== A pro-Russian group has already claimed responsibility but this is the first suggestion that it was backed by the Russian government ==

Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk made his remarks ahead of a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But one expert questioned what real evidence there was for the claims.

CyberBerkut
The attack targeted web pages for Mrs Merkel and the German parliament. Both sites were inaccessible from 10:00 Wednesday until the evening.

A group calling itself CyberBerkut claimed to be behind it. Berkut refers to Ukraine's now-disbanded elite riot police force who were accused of beating, torturing and shooting demonstrators.

Ahead of his meeting with Mrs Merkel, Mr Yatsenyuk was asked by German TV reporters if pro-Russian hackers from Ukraine were responsible.

"I strongly recommend that the Russian secret service stop spending taxpayer money for cyber-attacks against the Bundestag and Chancellor Merkel's office," he replied.

Reasonable doubt?
Tit-for-tat cyber-attack accusations are becoming more and more common even though it is notoriously difficult to pinpoint where an attack originates unless you scan every connection on the Internet - something emerging as very interesting to the US (NSA, CIA, FBI, Government) & UK (GCHQ, MI5, MI6, Government).

"It is interesting that countries are blaming each other for cyber-attacks even though the information they put in the public domain often doesn't substantiate their claims," security expert Prof Alan Woodward told the BBC.

He said that he would have thought that governments would be sure "beyond reasonable doubt" before making such serious accusations.

"The international community seems very quick to blame each other for the balance of probability which doesn't seem enough to me," he said.

This week, the FBI added more to its theory that North Korea was behind the Sony Pictures hack in November, reiterating that IP addresses linked to the attack were used exclusively by the secretive nation.

Prof Woodward questioned the FBI claims

"None of these addresses were actually in North Korea. They were in Singapore, Taiwan and all over the place."

He thinks that cybercrime is increasingly becoming part of the political agenda with varying tactics.

"It is interesting that all the rhetoric seems to be coming from countries that have existing tensions. They are using specific cyber-attacks for political point-scoring."

German intelligence agencies have said that they face about == 3,000 cyber-attacks each day ==.
Approximately five of these come from foreign intelligence agencies, the head of German domestic intelligence agency reported recently.

Source: BBC News Web Site

Other Hacks Reported

A few hacks happened throughout 2014, but some were only reported in December 2014.

Staples
Source: Fortune

More data breaches and our great identifier source: Information Is Beautiful