Hackers Breached Federal Reserve Bank Website

According to St. Louis-based Federal Reserve Bank, hackers during April 2015 had effectively managed to compromise the bank's online site, published nytimes.com, May 19, 2015.

On Monday, 18th May 2015, the organization notified all customers that the attack occurring on 25th April 2015 had hackers alter servers' Internet Protocol addresses related to the systems which then diverted traffic onto harmful web-pages the attackers set up to appear like research.stlouisfed.org site of the Federal Reserve Bank. Among the rogue web-pages, some looked like those for FRASER, FRED, ALFRED and GeoFRED.

As a consequence of the above; end-users landed on fraudulent web-pages mimicking material from the Fed, and endangering them with malware/phishing.

Whereas nothing is clear about the attackers' purpose, presumably their aim was for gaining admission into huge volumes of research and economic data already appearing on the affected site.

According to Chief Scientist Igor Baikalov at Securonix a security company, the hackers could have used spoofed web-pages for mining credentials, expecting the same passwords being used again on other online sites; alternatively installed malware which would enable access to end-users' PCs later. While impacted end-users couldn't do much for safeguarding themselves, Baikalov stated it would be good to change passwords just as using up-to-date anti-viruses for scanning PCs could help in malware detection. Infosecurity-magazine.com published this, May 20, 2015.

Further according to Baikalov, the Federal Reserve required closely monitoring impacted software programs to find any problems within user behavior as well as access so probable intruders could be identified and stopped from exploiting the bank's computers to make way for more attacks.

CEO Richard Blech of Secure Channels a digital security solutions company stated that the hacking assault showed how potential thugs duped bank customers and diverted the traffic onto similar-looking websites for making them enter their private details. In short, it was one good, conventional styled phishing assault. He continued that the latest attack was potentially for catastrophe to be little ignored. The hackers were making a game play of Federal Reserve, the consequences of which were likely to be enormous with drastic outcomes for the economy, he contended. Cio-today.com published this, May 19, 2015.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/27/2015