Is Iran messing with your bank account?
From Siobhan Gorman and Danny Yadron of The Wall Street Journal:
Financial firms have spent millions of dollars responding to the attacks, according to bank officials, who add that they can’t be expected to fend off attacks from a foreign government.
Defense officials have said Iran’s government is behind the assault. Officials from several affected banks, including PNC Financial Services Group Inc., SunTrust Banks Inc. and BB&T Corp. are urging the U.S. government to stop or mitigate the attacks, according to investigators.
The outcry is particularly significant from an industry that usually seeks to keep the government at arm’s length. Financial-services groups opposed a legislative effort last year to establish cybersecurity standards for key private-sector businesses, saying it could undermine protections already in place.
“The financial sector has historically been so sophisticated and organized in its security approach,” said Kiersten Todt Coon, a former staff member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and now president of Liberty Group Ventures LLC, a risk-management firm. “When they choose to go to the government, that shows how strong the severity of this threat is.”
My account over at BB&T has been nonoperational for over a week now. It seems the high tech advancement of online banking has come to a grind at BB&T. I may have one check book laying around collecting dust in a drawer down in the basement. I have to pay some bills so it is luckily I have a quill and ink set some place too.
When BB&T was called they were nice but not helpful. The person said use Firefox, but to no avail my account was not accessed. He did tell me about the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack but he could not explain what that was about. So off to Google I go.
I find out that BB&T had a DDOS attack back in October of last year where the hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters raged a cyber-attack. So this is nothing new to BB&T and other financial institutions. This is round two of what might be a prolonged event making me wonder what might happen in the long run.
“We have repeatedly stated that removal of the offensive video, Innocence of Muslims, from YouTube is the simplest solution to stop the cyber-attacks,” the hacktivists state. “You want to continue playing the game, yes?”
In a Jan. 8 post, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters suggested its attacks would be waged for 56 additional weeks, based on a series of numerical sequences developed from tallied likes and dislikes affiliated with the YouTube video, which it claims is offensive to Muslims. But in its most recent post, the group says the attacks could continue even longer, based on updated totals affiliated with those likes and dislikes.
Bank Info Security 1-22-2013
Mean time back at the ranch bill payments are going out later than they should. I may get dinged for a late fee and of course the cost of postage. What’s President Obama doing on this? Squat. He is too busy trying to destroy the Republican Party so the House will swing back to Democrats and Obama’s last two years can change this country dramatically from where it is today.
