Cyberattack on JPMorgan Raises Alarms at White House and on Wall Street.
President Obama and his top national security advisers began receiving periodic briefings on the huge cyberattack at JPMorgan Chase and nine other financial companies this summer, part of a new effort to keep top national security officials as updated on major cyberattacks as they are on Russian incursions into Ukraine or Islamic State attacks.
But in the JPMorgan case, according to officials familiar with the briefings, no one could tell the president what he most wanted to know: What was the motive of the attack? “The question kept coming back, ‘Is this plain old theft, or is Putin retaliating?’ one senior official said, referring to the American-led sanctions on Russia. “And the answer was: We don’t know for sure.’’
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, after being contacted by JPMorgan, took the I.P. addresses that the hackers were believed to have used to breach JPMorgan’s computer system to other financial institutions to see whether the same intruders had tried to hack into their systems as well, these people said. The banks also share information among themselves.
Three of the companies declined to comment. Jim Duffy, an ADP spokesman, said the payroll processing firm “observed Internet-based traffic from those criminals allegedly reported” to have hacked into JPMorgan. But he added that ADP had not “observed any issues associated with such scanning of our defenses.”
The identities of the other companies could not be learned on Wednesday. . .
The breach is under investigation from Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, according to a person briefed on the matter.
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