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Trends in Targets of DDoS Attacks on US Banks

Posted: 24th April 2013
By: CHRIS

The Al Qassam Cyber Fighters campaign of cyber attacks against United States banks had significant effects on those organizations’ website performance during the past few months. Given our previous coverage, we felt it would be valuable to provide a short summary of the open source reporting on the campaign that began in September.

What stands out:

  • In all, we count 16 organizations reportedly affected by the attacks that began in September with the most recent unique targets being Patelco Credit Union and Fifth Third Bancorp.
  • The first several months heavily targeted Bank of America, PNC, and Suntrust. All three trailed off in the early months of 2013; could this be due to improved security or a shift in resources?
  • The organization with the biggest surge appears to be American Express; it’s interesting then to note the absence of Visa and MasterCard as targets although perhaps the Al Qassam Cyber Fighters felt that Anonymous was already taking care of business against two companies.

You’ll notice that there also appears to be a trailing off in the volume of reported attacks. This could, as noted above, be a result of improved security at the banks in question or a declining interest from the media to report on the persistent events unless a notable shift in severity takes place. You can also compare the above historical information to this month’s data from Recorded Future.

Want to do more sophisticated analysis on the cyber attacks data set displayed above? Contact Recorded Future or check out their web intelligence solutions for information security.

 

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