JPMorgan Cyberattack Which Affected 76 Million U.S. Households May Have Been Carried Out By The Russians

A new report alleges that, according to U.S. officials, the recent JPMorgan cyberattack, which affected over 76 million American households and 7 million small businesses, was carried out by the Russian government.

The New York Times report noted that the massive cyberattack was the biggest ever for a U.S. corporation and left many people’s private data compromised.

As well as personal data, “internal JPMorgan Chase information” relating to the users was also exposed. The report reveals that another nine financial institutions were infiltrated by the same group of hackers.

Among other speculative rumors is one that claims the cyberattack was revenge against U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia after their invasion of Ukraine. A senior official told the Times, “It could be in retaliation for the sanctions. But it could be mixed motives — to steal if they can, or to sell whatever information they could glean.”

Fortunately, according to the report, the breach did not expose any customer account information. A spokesperson for JPMorgan said “There is no evidence that account information for such affected customers — account numbers, passwords, user IDs, dates of birth or Social Security numbers — was compromised during this attack.”

Nevertheless, one file which did get hacked has left JPMorgan executives more than a little unsettled, as the report noted, “That file contained a list of every application and program deployed on standard JPMorgan computers that hackers can crosscheck with known, or new, vulnerabilities in each system in a search for a backdoor entry.”

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) spoke about the need to pass legislation in congress against cyberattacks.

“The longer we wait to take action, the more vulnerable we become, and as we’ve seen today, Americans will pay the price. We simply cannot afford to wait any longer. Congress must work to pass legislation that will improve our capabilities and protect us against more attacks like these. The next Pearl Harbor will be cyber, and shame on us if we’re not prepared for it.”