Bank gr warns of high cyber attack risk

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.

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 US companies. The posting said the attacks would continue until the film that had stirred up anti-US 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.

Dan Holden, director of security research at Arbor Networks, said that several US banks were under assault by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaign. He declined to identify them by name.

An outside security contractor who was familiar with the attacks said that they were massive in scope.

Denial-of-service attacks seek to disrupt websites and other computer systems at the targeted organization by overwhelming their networks with computer traffic.

FRAUD ALERT

The move by FS-ISAC came just two

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