US Bancorp customers had a hard time loading the company’s web site and do online transactions. Its spokesman Tom Joyce said that the site remained up during the purported attack. According to its web admins, the Minneapolis bank got unusually high web traffic that was similar to what the other major banks have experienced over the last two weeks. It was reported that Wells Fargo & Co.’s web site was attacked Tuesday. These are part of the attacks on US banks made by supposed Middle East group.
Joyce said that US Bancorp is working with federal law enforcement. He also wanted to assure the bank’s customers that their personal data and funds are safe and untouched. SiteDown.co, a site that tracks web site outages, reported that 56 customers said that www.usbank.com was down as of noon. But the bank refuted that its site remained online but did experienced some slowdown.
Joyce said that US Bancorp’s ATM network was working properly. Customers who were having trouble with mobile banking are told to call the bank’s toll free number (1-800-US-BANKS) or they can go to a local branch.
According to a computer security expert, large scale denial of service attacks were made against banks in the United States. The attackers attempt to overwhelm computer servers with communications demands that cause the networks to shut off or slow down.
In a post at Pastebin.com, a group called Izz al-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters claimed responsibility for the outages at Bank of America, JPMorgan and Citi last week. They also claimed the attacks on Wells Fargo and US Bancorp. The group said that it would launch an attack on US Bancorp on Wednesday and the PNC Financial Services on Thursday. According to the post, the attacks would continue until the movie that insults the Islamic prophet Muhammad was removed from the internet.
