U.S. Financial Institutions Become Targets of Cyberattacks

American Express confirmed that its website had come under attack last week. The assault, which took the site offline for two hours, marks the latest in a string of powerful digital attacks on American financial institutions that began this past September. JPMorgan Chase and others experienced a similar attack this month. The assaults collectively resulted in the loss of millions of dollars. Continue reading U.S. Financial Institutions Become Targets of Cyberattacks

McAfee Researchers Claim to Discover Massive Hacking Attack

  • McAfee researchers say they have uncovered the biggest hacker attack ever, involving 72 governments and organizations around the world, including the U.S., Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Canada and India — some dating back as far as 2006. Data compromised amounts to several petabytes of information.
  • The attack uses compromised remote access tools, or RATs, which allow system administrators to access systems from around the world and would allow an attacker to view and download confidential information. Some of those organizations and companies compromised still do not know it.
  • The attacker was not a hacker group but likely a “state actor” with very high skill levels (China is the “leading candidate”).
  • According to a blog post from Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s VP Threat Research: “I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised (or will be shortly), with the great majority of the victims rarely discovering the intrusion or its impact.”