Federal Reserve Hit by Cyber Attack

Banking, finance, and taxes

Published: February 6, 2013 7:00 am

Last Updated: December 30, 2013 7:44 am

Hackers have scored another victory in a series that has extended from Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) China site, to the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) site, to The Wall Street Journal and to several government suppliers. The latest victim is the Federal Reserve.

While it is not clear what hackers might do with Fed data, that data might include information on banks the agency oversees or forecasts for future action meant to improve the economy. The Fed reported:

“The Federal Reserve system is aware that information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product,” a Fed spokeswoman said.

“Exposure was fixed shortly after discovery and is no longer an issue. This incident did not affect critical operations of the Federal Reserve system,” the spokeswoman said, adding that all individuals effected by the breach had been contacted.

One of the yields of the attacks may be information on as many as 4,000 executives at U.S. banks.

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