Large banks hit by large Cyber Attacks

Members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters recently launched cyber attacks on the Web sites of BB&T, Capital One and HSBC.

“Similar attacks, now in their fifth week, have crippled online access to at least eight U.S. banking companies,” writes The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Christopher Seward. “Others affected since September include Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC, and U.S. Bank. Capital One’s websites were hit twice this month.”

“BB&T worked Wednesday to restore the bank’s website, and Capital One was adding new security to its website, which was attacked on Tuesday, the banks said,” writes The Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman. “BB&T operates the 11th biggest U.S. bank, and Capital One runs the 13th largest, according to a Federal Reserve ranking by consolidated assets.”

“HSBC Holdings, a British multinational bank with U.S. headquarters in Mettawa, Ill., on Oct. 18 became the 10th bank in recent weeks to suffer online outages as a result of a distributed denial of service attack,” writes BankInfoSecurity’s Jeffrey Roman. “The $317.5 billion institution reported that its websites worldwide were knocked out of service as a result of the attack.”

In a statement to BankInfoSecurity, HSBC spokesman Neal McGarity said, “The denial of service attack did not affect any customer data, but did prevent customers from using HSBC online services, including Internet banking. We are taking appropriate action, working hard to restore service. We are pleased to say that some sites are now back up and running.”

Cross-posted: www.esecurityplanet.com