Pierluigi Paganini August 29, 2014

US law enforcement and private security firms are investigating on a series of cyber attacks which hit JPMorgan and other financial institutions.

The FBI announced that the Bureau is investigating media reports of cyber attacks on US banks and financial firms, but law enforcement hasn’t provided further information on the incidents neither on the affected companies.

“We are working with the United States Secret Service to determine the scope of recently reported cyber attacks against several American financial institutions,” said FBI spokesman Joshua Campbell.

JPMorgan Chase & Co is one of the company recently targeted by cyber attack, according post published by the Reuters agency, which refers as source two people familiar with the incident who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Also other media reported the cyber attacks on US banking industry, The New York Times reported late on Wednesday that systems of  JPMorgan and at least other four US banks had been compromised in a series of targeted attacks in August.

JPMorgan was still investigating on the cyber attacks, at time the time I’m writing, the are no information on the effects of the incident, JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony declined comment the events.

“Companies of our size unfortunately experience cyber attacks nearly every day. We have multiple, layers of defense to counteract any threats and constantly monitor fraud levels,” he said in a statement.

Bloomberg News published an article that speculates on the author of the attack, the media agency suspect the involvement of a Russian cyber gang, which has carried out cyber attacks against JPMorgan Chase and another unnamed financial institutions in August.

According Bloomberg the attacks caused the disclosure of a huge amount of sensitive data, including checking and savings account information:

“Russian hackers attacked the U.S. financial system in mid-August, infiltrating and stealing data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and at least one other bank, an incident the FBI is investigating as a possible retaliation for government-sponsored sanctions, according to two people familiar with the probe. The attack resulted in the loss of gigabytes of sensitive data,”

Law enforcement is investigating whether recent attacks of major European banks are linked to the attacks on US banking industry, in particular if threat actors exploited a similar vulnerability in the recent attacks. According to Bloomberg the hackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability in one of the banks’ websites.

The Times report reported that several private security firms have been hired to conduct forensic analysis of the breached networks.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – JPMorgan, banking)