[News] A number of United States banks, including JPMorgan Chase and at least four others, were hit by cyber criminals this month.

The hackers infiltrated the networks of the banks, stealing gigabytes of data, including checking and savings account information. These types of sophisticated cyber attacks happen nearly every day world-wide. The intrusions are believed to be performed by Russian hackers, but security experts have not yet made that conclusion.

Earlier this year, iSight Partners, a security firm in Dallas that provides intelligence on online threats, warned companies that they should be prepared for cyberattacks from Russia in retaliation for Western economic sanctions. Russian hackers started an online assault in Estonia in 2007 that nearly crippled the Baltic nation, after Estonian government workers moved a Soviet-era war memorial from the Estonian capital.

The American banking industry has been a constant target for cyber criminals in recent years, committing financial theft, and not only. Over the past two years, hackers have been targeting banks for political reasons, one example being the group of Iranian hackers attacking banks using DDoS methods causing their networks to collapse. The reason behind was an anti-Islam video that mocked the Prophet Muhammed and they did not stop until the video was removed from the Internet.  In the case of JPMorgan it is believed to have been solely for financial reasons.

Banks are also frequent targets for intelligence agencies looking to collect information about their targets. In 2012, Russian security researchers uncovered a computer virus on 2,500 computers, many of them inside major Lebanese banks, including the Bank of Beirut and Blom Bank. The virus was specifically intended to steal customers’ login credentials to their bank accounts.

The researchers believed the computer virus was state-sponsored and said they had found evidence it had been created by the same programmers who created Flame and Stuxnet, two computer viruses that officials have said were unleashed by the United States and Israel to spy on computers inside Iran.

Retrieved from: The New York Times

Image credit: utopiathecollapse.com