Most of us thought 2015 was the year of the data breach, but then 2016 happened. 2017 has a job to do if it wants to continue the trend
Saudi Arabia hit by wave of cyber attacks, Iran blamed
In early December Saudi Arabia was hit by a wave of destructive cyber attacks which resulted in data being erased at the government's aviation agency. Five additional targets were hit too, unnamed sources told Bloomberg.
In total thousands of computers were wiped in Saudi's General Authority of Civil Aviation, erasing critical data and bringing operations there to a halt for several days, the sources say.
The attacks were apparently carried out using an enhanced version of the Disttrack malware used against the oil company Saudi Aramco in 2012 in the so-called Shamoon attacks.
According to security vendor Palo Alto Networks: "Disttrack is a multipurpose tool that exhibits worm-like behavior by attempting to spread to other systems on a local network using stolen administrator credentials. More importantly, its claim to fame is the ability to destroy data and to render infected systems unusable. The [Saudi Aramco] attack four years ago resulted in 30,000 or more systems being damaged."
