JP Morgan Chase Bank Suffers Data Breach Affecting 76 Million Customers and 7 Million Businesses
The largest bank in the world, JP Morgan Chase Bank, has confirmed it has suffered a data breach affecting 76 million home consumers and 7 million business accounts.
A securities filing on Thursday confirmed that up to 76 million households and seven million small business, far more than initially thought, were affected in a cyber attack that hit JP Morgan Chase Bank over the summer, making it one of the largest data breaches of all time.
New-York based bank confirmed in a form 8-k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that customer information including that of names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses were comprised in the breach. The bank does not believe any account numbers, passwords, user ID’s, dates of birth or social security numbers were compromised.
Initial estimates regarding the breach were far smaller, only one million customers were thought to have been impacted in the breach.
Rumors regards a potential Chase bank data breach had initially surfaced late August, when sources heard that the F.B.I. was working with the United States Secret Service to investigate a “computer-hacking attack” at a number of American financial institutions.
In the companies public disclosure posted on their Chase.com and JPMorganOnline.com websites, the bank claims to have not noticed any unusual customer activity or fraud stemming from the breach, but plans to monitor the situation moving forward.
Attackers hacked into more than 90 of JP Morgan’s servers for short periods of time over the course of two months, staring mid-June and ending mid-August, according to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. After the company learned of the attack mid-August, they closed all of the attackers access points.
Both reports cite the attacks originated from overseas but the Wall Street Journal report suspects it came from a Russian or Eastern European link “based on the style of attacks and the bank target.”
JP Morgan can now add itself to the never ending list of massive corporations suffering data breaches. Just last month we saw Home Depot suffer a data breach, putting 56 million payment cards at risk.
Many security experts say JP Morgan shouldn’t jump to conclusion that no money was stolen or will be stolen in the attack. Financial institutions are commonly targets for hackers and can be the most damaging.
Update (7/21/2015): Four men throughout Florida and Israel have been arrested in relation to the JPMorgan Chase Bank hack.
[Photo via Joe Mabel/Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)]
