Cyber Security Attacks On Financial Institutions

Cyber crimes from criminal organizations has risen over the past few years many of these have been located overseas and most of them have been based in Eastern Europe that hire and direct hackers on what they want done. The statement has been made that the battle lines between cyber attacks by organized crime reaches far wider than just an institution's firewalls. One such organized cybercrime unit is the Russian Business Network they are one of the more well known criminal organizations delving into the global networks of the financial institutions.

With the growing threat of cyber-terror crimes it is no secret that the victims and potential victims of these crimes would be uneasy. The short terms affects could include loss of valuable information, money, damage to brand and company reputation

Times have changed what was known as organized crime has been replaced by Cybercrimes (Heists: Cybercrimes with Ben Hammersley). Cybercrimes have risen dramatically in recent years and have become a major issue the United States and company’s face today jeopardizing as well as threatening the critical infrastructure of America (Cyberwar Threat, 2005). Sadly, the status quo of cyber security is very unstable with the advancements and growth which has put most individuals and businesses into an enormous threat (Agustina, 2015).

In June and July of 2014, the largest US bank JP Morgan Chase is again burst hacked. over 76 million household clients and over 7 million business clients of JP Morgan Chase suffered a hack of their information stored in credit card. Based on the information disclosure, the disclosure of data, including name, address, telephone number, email address and Chase internal system related information could had been stolen by hackers. In October 9th, 2014, another nine major financial institutions had been attacked by hackers. This was the largest case in Wall Street history that hackers hacked a financial institution.

Adam Segal’s “The Hacked World Order” reveals many prevalent issues in today’s technologically centered society. Starting at Year Zero, June 2012 to June 2013, the battle over cyberspace witnessed world-changing cyberattacks. This was accomplished due to the fact that nearly 75% of the world’s population has easy access to a mobile phone, and the Internet connects nearly 40% of the total human population, which is nearly 2.7 billion people. With that being said, cyberattacks are becoming a more realistic form of terror.

One of the biggest computer crimes is Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS) defined as “techniques or actions involving the use of one or more damaged computers to damage another computer or a targeted computer system in order to shut the computer or computer system down and deny the service of the damaged computer or computer systems to legitimate users” by the Arkansas code. These DDoS attacks are one-way attack someone by affecting their computer network. DDoS attacks send a message to the people running the network that they can be affected, many people use DDoS attacks to make a political statement. One recent DDoS attack against the Luxembourg government was made in late February of this year “According to reports from the Luxemburger Wort, the attack started at 9.30 am, forcing the web servers of many state authorities offline or difficult to reach. Just over an hour later, the state-owned IT operator "Centre des Techniques de l 'information de l 'Etat" (CTIE) sent a message via Twitter, to confirm that the network was the victim of a DDoS attack” (Millman, 2017) there cannot be a sure reason for the attack but these types of attacks are used in a political context to protest the actions of that nation. Computer crime can be more than just for money it can be a political statement, a warning, or threat of worse to come. It is clear that computer crime is not slowing down or going to slow down “In the

In this paper, I will identify security threats that Bank of America faces today. In addition, I will describe the techniques and processes used to identify the vulnerabilities and threats, describe risks to the information and related vulnerabilities within Bank of America when utilizing components of the web. Discussions on BoA safeguard against legal issues will be addressed followed by the types of social data that potentially cause problems for this bank institute. In conclusion, I will explain the legal, ethical, and regulatory requirements Bank of America utilize for the protection of the organization.

Corporations are also largely pushing back against this government debate for a backdoor. According to Peterson’s article in the Washington Post, many companies have experienced an increase in security breaches and attacks from criminals in recent years. As a consequence, many of them are working on incorporating harder encryption systems, some of which are designed in such a way that the company does not have access to the “digital keys” that are used to unlock this data. Due to these measures, Sanger and Perlroth found that “when companies like Apple and Facebook are issued court orders to help governments monitor their customers’ messages, all they can do is turn over a stream of unintelligible code.” Supporters of encryption, such as Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook, state that limiting this encryption would damage “customers’ confidence that the most precious data they keep in their phones is safe from garden variety cybercriminals as well as sophisticated nation states that could gain access to keys via hacking” (Sanger and Perlroth). Furthermore, Sanger and Perlroth spoke to a computer security expert named Matt Blaze at the University of Pennsylvania who mentioned that encryption itself is only particularly useful for hiding data and the contents of conversations. Blaze states that encryption does not hide the fact that two parties were in communication, nor does it protect that data when the devices used by the individuals are compromised, implying that encryption

Prevalent to the current trend now is the dependency of the society on Information technology and communication systems. Every aspect of human life is one way or the other linked and controlled by information technology tools. The importance of information technology cannot be over emphasized as its unavailability could lead to a form of disaster or the other. Pivotal infrastructures like finance, healthcare, education and security are driven by information technology. However, information technology and its benefits are accompanied by vulnerabilities and risks that can be exploited by people with the necessary technical skills. Individuals like ‘Hackers’ and ‘Cyber Terrorist’ can cause disruption to information systems, commit financial fraud and also attack computers and networks. These attacks and disruptions could result to violence against people and properties. In some cases, death, serious injuries and severe economic loss could occur as a result of these attacks.

With the creation of the Internet came a whole new list of crimes targeting U.S. Banks and Financial Institutions. Crimes involving phishing, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), and Malware to name a few are becoming more advanced and widespread on a global scale. The motivations behind these cyber-crimes are the safety of hiding behind a computer, can easily be conducted without being an expert at hacking, and profitability for the perpetrators is worth the risk (Singleton, T., Singleton, A., and Gottlieb, 2006). The data demonstrated that cyber-crimes targeting banks and financial institutions have overtaken the traditional bank robbery or bank fraud (Lesk, 2011; Holt& Lampke, 2010). An analysis of the literature confirms that the U.S. economy is negatively affected by the cyber-hacking of U.S. banks and financial institutions, through monetary losses, and stock market loses. The literature acknowledges that banks and financial institutions are under a constant barrage of various forms of cyber-attacks in order electronically steal money, account credentials or create new fraudulent accounts. Lastly the literature reports that banks and financial institutions underreport or do not disclose the impact of cyber-crimes, and offers a few theories about why there is a lack of disclosure or no disclosure at all.

When firms like Home Depot and Target invests a lot of financial and non-financial resources to curb the menace, one is left to wonder why such vices continues to affect them and their clients. Hacking of companies in the United States have reached a sky high and notable names in the industry have been affected by the vice. The firms like Home Depot, JPMorgan, Michael, Nieman Marcus and Target, have had its share of this vice. The United States Postal Services have not been left behind also, because it was also affected by the hackers ( 'Cybercrime a

The fight against hackers and cyber crime is a global problem and nationally and internationally, the threats they caused have been recognized and acknowledged.

Today, the security breaches at an alarming stage, Last year there were nearly 1 billion cases registered of the compromised records. There are many globally organized criminal networks like “black hat” hackers who are completely devoted in stealing confidential data. The malicious software developed by these hackers is sold on an underground black market. In this market, criminals trade the stolen information which then shared numerous times.

The cyber-crimes are a supplement for cyber-terrorism in what concerns the methods used although the motivations are different from each person. Many of these attacks are made either to produce anarchy, for amusement, to reaffirm the hacker?s position, or from a political motivation.

Cybercrime has become a fast growing concern for the 21st century as businesses, institutions and individuals grow into an interconnected web of computer networks. Online business transactions, along with the sharing of personal information, are vulnerable to a host of disasters that can reap economic and social havoc. Some sources say that today, cybercrime costs more than $1.0 trillion to society--Global Industry Analysts, Inc. forecasted the world cyber security market to reach $80 billion by 2017 (Gale, 2011).