Bank group warns of heightened risk of cyber attacks
MLB Stephen Strasburg jersey A financial services industry group warned U.S. banks, brokerages and insurers on Wednesday to be on heightened alert for cyber attacks after Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase experienced unexplained outages on their public websites.
The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which is widely known as FS-ISAC, raised the cyber threat level to "high" from "elevated" in an advisory to members, citing "recent credible intelligence regarding the potential" for cyber attacks as its reason for the move.
An outside security contractor told Reuters that "massive" denial-of-service attacks had been launched against multiple banks, but declined to comment further.
Denial-of-service attacks seek to disrupt websites and other computer systems at the targeted organization by overwhelming their networks with computer traffic.
Wholesale mlb jersey from china The move by FS-ISAC came just two days the FBI published a "fraud alert" advising financial services firms that cyber criminals may be disrupting service to their websites in a bid to keep banks from noticing a recent surge in fraudulent large-sized wire transfers. (http://1.usa.gov/SUGCDZ)
An FBI spokeswoman declined to say if the tactics cited in the "fraud alert" were related to the problems experienced by the two banks.
The problems with the websites at the two banks came after an unidentified person posted a statement on the Internet threatening to attack Bank of America and the New York Stock Exchange as a "first step" in a campaign against U.S. companies. The posting said the attacks would continue until the film that had stirred up anti-U.S. protests across the Middle East was "erased" from the Internet.
It was not possible to identify the person who posted the statement. NBA #9 Rajon Rondo Garnett jersey Nor was it clear if the threat had anything to do with the issues at either of the two banks.
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On Wednesday the consumer banking website of JPMorgan Chase & Co was intermittently unavailable to some customers. The problems followed issues with the website of Bank of America Corp on Tuesday amid threats on the Internet that a group was planning to launch cyber attacks on a U.S. bank.
JPMorgan Chase spokesman Patrick Linehan said, "We're experiencing intermittent issues with Chase.com. We apologize for any inconvenience and are working to restore full connectivity.
A Bank of America spokesman reported no continuing problems on Wednesday. "Our online banking services have been, and are, up and running," Mark Pipitone said. Wholesale nba jerseys free shipping "The vast majority of our customers have not experienced any issues."
The short advisory from the industry group urged banks and other industry members to "ensure constant diligence in monitoring and quick response to any malicious events."
The Reston, Virginia-based group is owned by dozens of firms, including the two banks, as well as Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley. Insurers including American International Group, Allstate Corp and State Farm Insurance also belong to the group, as do credit card firms MasterCard Inc and Visa Inc.
The advisory also cited a warning from Microsoft Corp that hackers have attacked some of its customers due to a security bug in its widely used Internet Explorer browser.Microsoft has yet to release software to fix that security flaw. The German government advised the public to stop using Internet Explorer until an update is released. NCAA Florida State Seminoles jersey The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has advised users to follow steps recommended by Microsoft to reduce the risk of attacks but noted that those measures may not fully secure the browser.
