Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, took the stand in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and an ambitious expansion of the Pentagon's Cyber Command. "We've seen the attacks on Wall Street over the last six months grow significantly," Alexander told the senators, explaining that denial of service (DOS) attacks are the most common assault on banks' websites. "And if you look at industry, especially the anti-virus community and others, they believe it's going to grow more in 2013. And there's a lot that we need to do to prepare for this."
The general wasn't kidding. Within an hour or so of Alexander's testimony reports that Chase Bank's website had been hacked started to bubble up. Shortly before 7 p.m. Chase confirmed to CNBC that they had indeed been targeted. Hackers hit Chase with — you guessed it — a DOS attack, bringing down the company's website. It's unclear if any customer data was compromised. It's also absolutely unclear if the hack has anything to do with the series of hearings in the Senate on Tuesday that mention cyber security and the threat of a cyber attack. Hacking into a bank's website right after the head of the NSA warns the Senate about hackers hacking into banks' websites is certainly a clever way to win attention.
Continuous Monitoring As a Service: A Shift in the Way Government Does Business
Research Report: Powering Continuous Monitoring Through Big Data
Addressing the 3 Biggest BYOD Security Threats
Mobile Apps: New Ways to Connect Government with Citizens
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
By using this service you agree not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable. Although Nextgov does not monitor comments posted to this site (and has no obligation to), it reserves the right to delete, edit, or move any material that it deems to be in violation of this rule.