Bank websites have been plagued by outages in recent months, with waves of hackers seemingly targeting the sites and causing DNS errors to sprout up again and again. While the denial of service attacks haven’t actually resulted in any serious security breach or loss of customer data, it has been a inconvenience to customers around the world trying to access their banking information. Today, Citigroup (NYSE: C) appears to be showing signs of trouble.
Citigroup customers experienced widespread issues accessing the financial giant’s consumer website on Thursday. In the past 24 hours users have reported 187 downtime reports for Citibank.com on Sitedown.co, which tracks website troubles. On Wednesday Citi told customers on Twitter it is “working on technical issues” with the company’s websites and recommended users call the number on the back of their cards for immediate assistance.
It’s not clear what caused the Citi website issues, but a person familiar with the matter said they did not compromise the security of accounts or integrity of data stored on the bank’s Web servers. Shares of the financial-services company ticked down 0.13% to $39.20 in after-hours action Thursday evening. Citi closed at $39.25, down 0.76% on the day.
Earlier denial of service attacks on bank websites hit Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). Such attacks frustrate consumers, threaten to cause reputational damage and can even hurt banks’ bottom lines. According to a recent survey by security firm Radware, the cost of downtime for financial-services companies is estimated at $32,560 each minute.
Earlier this month security firm McAfee warned of a “credible threat” to the banking industry known as Project Blitzkrieg. The attack, set for the spring, involves Russian hackers who aim to target investment and national banks through fraudulent transactions. Whether the recent attacks on Citigroup’s website are connected to this wider plan is yet to be seen, but the banks are surely taking notice and continue to take information security even more seriously than they have.
