Citizens Bank Hit By Possible Cyber Attack

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="(Photo Credit: KDKA)" src="http://cbspittsburgh.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/citizens_bank.jpg?w=300" /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">From: <a href="http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/" style="text-align: center;">http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com</a></div></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2d2e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px;">PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Add Citizens Bank to the list of financial institutions whose online banking websites are tough to access, Citizens officials confirmed on Friday.</span><br /><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #2c2d2e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Our website has experienced temporary disruptions due to an unusually high volume of Internet traffic, similar to disruptions that have impacted other U.S. banks, ” Sylvia Bronner, Citizens Bank spokesperson, said in a statement to KDKA money editor Jon Delano.</div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #2c2d2e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This problem of getting online at Citizens Bank is very similar to one that plagued PNC Bank several weeks ago.<br /><br /><div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There, a Middle Eastern group claimed they wanted to stop access online to banks because of their objections to alleged anti-Muslim videotapes on YouTube.</div><div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Citizens would not confirm that the al-Qassam Cyber Fighters had targeted them, too. But Carnegie Mellon University professor Michael Smith, an expert on cyber marketing, says the tactics are the same.</div><div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />It’s called DDOS or distributed denial of service.“They’re trying to pretend to be real consumers accessing the website, and if you send enough of those requests, the website doesn’t know which are the real consumers and which are the fake consumers, and the real consumers can’t get access,” said Smith.</div><div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The distributed means there are multiple computers all sending requests to the same service. And the denial of service reflects the fact that the goal is to keep legitimate customers from being able to access the computer,” added Smith.</div><div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Smith says it’s easy for cyber terrorists to do, but can also be minimized by banks; and while customer information is not compromised, studies show, “If I can’t get access to a bank immediately, I’m going to go someplace else, or I could go someplace else, which is bad for business.”</div></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #2c2d2e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div></div></div></div>

Citizens Bank Cyber Attack Citizens Bank Hit By Possible Cyber Attack

From: http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.comPITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Add Citizens Bank to the list of financial institutions whose online banking websites are tough to access, Citizens officials confirmed on Friday.“Our website has experienced temporary disruptio…

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