The July cyberattack on JPMorgan Chase & Co. that compromised the names, addresses, phone numbers and contact information of over 83 million people are believed to have originated in Russia with at least some level of state approval.
“It could be in retaliation for the sanctions” placed on Russia, one senior official briefed on the intelligence told The New York Times on Saturday. “But it could be mixed motives — to steal if they can, or to sell whatever information they could glean.”
JPMorgan Chase has worked with the Treasury, the Secret Service and intelligence agencies since the attack, which did not completely shut out the attackers until August, the paper reported. More than 90 servers were accessed and over 7 million small businesses were compromised.
“It was a huge surprise that they were able to compromise a huge bank like JPMorgan,” said Al Pascual, a security analyst with Javelin Strategy and Research, told the Times. “It scared the pants off many people.”
Experts fears that similar attacks in the future could ignite a financial crisis. JPMorgan Chase may be particularly vulnerable: The Times noted that the hackers were able to steal “a list of every application and program deployed on standard JPMorgan computers that hackers can crosscheck with known, or new, vulnerabilities in each system in a search for a backdoor entry.”
JPMorgan Chase has responded to the hacking by disabling compromised accounts and resetting passwords for its employees. The company also notified customers that they would not need to change their passwords or account information, nor would they be held liable for unauthorized transactions, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.