JPM Denies Report of Second Hack, Says 76M Customers Affected in Earlier Attack
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) refuted a report Thursday afternoon that it experienced an attack on its systems for the second time in about three months.
A spokesperson for the bank told FOX Business the report from the New York Times citing several people familiar with the situation is “false; we are not aware of any new cyber attack.”
The report from the Times suggested hackers with links to Italy or southern Europe gained access to the bank’s servers, but didn’t make clear whether the incident was a whole new attack, or whether more information was coming to light about a breach that happened earlier in the year.
Late Thursday afternoon, JPM revealed that the earlier data breach, which took place in July, affected 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. But the bank said there's no evidence that account information for affected customers -- such as passwords, Social Security numbers and actual account numbers -- had been stolen. It also said it hadn't detected any fraudulent activity related to the hack.
The Times issued a correction to its original headline Thursday afternoon clarifying “the article misstated the extent of the cyber security issues at JPMorgan Chase.”
In August, the nation’s biggest bank by assets said it was investigating a possible cyber attack that happened in July and allowed hackers to enter many of the bank’s servers. It was reported JPM and four of the nation’s other big banks were the targets of coordinated attacks. Stolen in the breach were large amounts of data including checking and savings account information.
Since news of the original attack broke, JPMorgan has worked with law enforcement officials to determine exactly how far the attack spanned, and taken steps to safeguard confidential information. At that point, the bank said it hadn’t identified unusual fraudulent activity.
The attack followed a string of cyber security breaches including a massive hack of Target (NYSE:TGT) payment systems on Black Friday, as well as recent data breaches at Home Depot (NYSE:HD), Medtronic (NYSE:MDT), Michaels craft-store chain, and others.
Shares of JPMorgan were 0.65% lower in midday trading.