It seems hackers are at it again. After the fiasco on Home Depot's hacking earlier this year, the hackers now turned their focus on one of United States' largest bank, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
An employee password was exploited and used to access data on 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. This is one of the largest cyber-attacks and yesterday, the bank disclosed the breach. The bank reassured its clients that there is still no evidence that the account numbers as well as passwords were compromised.
J.P. Morgan has been struggling to fend off damage since the incident which was first reported by Bloomberg last August. Anonymous sources revealed that new details surfaced on how the hackers accomplished this over a span of months.
According to the bank, the current threat is if the criminals try to trick people into giving more data such as passwords.
J.P. Morgan Spokesperson Patricia Wexler said that the data were compromised through websites Chase.com as well as JPMorganOnline.com and the mobile apps that support those websites.
The bank currently has 65 million customers and reaches half of all United States households.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies began to probe the incident last June. According to sources, hackers entered a web-development server with the username and password of an employee and then hacked their way into the network.
Per U.S. Senator Edward Markey, "The data breach at JPMorgan Chase is yet another example of how Americans' most sensitive personal information is in danger," Markey is a Massachusetts Democrat and member of the chamber's commerce committee. He called for legislation for protection against cyber-attacks.
JPMorgan Chief Operating Officer Matt Zames has also told employees to be more cautious. In a memo shared to all employees, it said, "Make sure you have fortified your own defenses. Log off your workstation when you leave your desk. Change your passwords often, choose passwords that are very hard for others to guess, and never, ever share passwords."
