U.S. Banks Hang Tough After a Week-Plus Long Barrage of Cyberattacks
Think your week was rough? Trying running security for a U.S. bank, many of which were hammered with non-stop cyberattacks for more than seven days. According to reports, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and around half a dozen banks in all saw significant traffic surges and suffered disruptions in service, which are typically telltale signs of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
We noticed some downtime at PNC bank, which apparently was hit pretty hard. PNC spokesman Fred Solomon told Yahoo News in a telephone interview that the flow of data on the company's website peaked at 65 gigabits per second during the attacks, and that it's the strongest surge in traffic the bank has ever seen.
Image Source: Flickr (pasukaru76)
The question now is, who or which party is responsible for the attacks? One of the few clues has been Internet postings supposedly made by Islamists who are are enraged at an anti-Muslim movie made in the U.S., though at least one security researcher involved with analyzing the situation believes the postings are probably fake and intended to throw authorities off the trail of the real culprit(s).
According to Mike Smith at web security company Akamai, hackers with a political agenda ("hactivists") typically post their agendas on hacked sites rather than engage in DoS attacks.
Did you notice any downtime or unusual activity on your bank's website during the past few days?
We noticed some downtime at PNC bank, which apparently was hit pretty hard. PNC spokesman Fred Solomon told Yahoo News in a telephone interview that the flow of data on the company's website peaked at 65 gigabits per second during the attacks, and that it's the strongest surge in traffic the bank has ever seen.
Image Source: Flickr (pasukaru76)
The question now is, who or which party is responsible for the attacks? One of the few clues has been Internet postings supposedly made by Islamists who are are enraged at an anti-Muslim movie made in the U.S., though at least one security researcher involved with analyzing the situation believes the postings are probably fake and intended to throw authorities off the trail of the real culprit(s).
According to Mike Smith at web security company Akamai, hackers with a political agenda ("hactivists") typically post their agendas on hacked sites rather than engage in DoS attacks.
Did you notice any downtime or unusual activity on your bank's website during the past few days?
