Cyberattack warning prompted by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase website outages

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.

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. () 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. Nor was it clear if the threat had anything to do with the issues at either of the two banks.

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. ”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. 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.

The warning from FS-ISAC comes as the Obama Administration is considering issuing an executive order that could instruct government agencies to take action to help better protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.

Legislation that would strengthen the government’s ability to help secure private networks has so far been stalled in Congress by groups concerned about privacy issues as well as business groups that oppose increased regulation of their activities.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who heads the Senate Commerce Committee, on Wednesday sent letters to the 500 biggest U.S. companies, challenging them to improve their computer security. He blamed the defeat of the legislation on concerns raised by ”a handful of business lobbying groups and trade associations.“ He asked the companies to identify their own best practices and to spell out their concerns about government-conducted risk assessments that were part of the cyber security bill. He
warned that the companies could face ”reactive and overly prescriptive legislation“ if nothing was done until some cyber disaster.

Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter complained that businesses are not doing enough to protect their own networks during a speech to the annual Air Force Association conference, saying he was disappointed that the legislation has not passed Congress.

Officials with FS-ISAC could not be reached to comment on the decision to raise its cyber threat level. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the advisory from the industry group.