Capital One is hit by cyber attack

Capital One Financial Corp. said it was the latest target in a new round of coordinated cyber attacks aimed at disrupting the websites of major U.S. banks, and SunTrust Banks Inc. and Regions Financial Corp. said they expect to be next.

Pam Girardo, a spokeswoman for McLean, Va.-based Capital One, confirmed that the bank’s online systems were disrupted and later that most online services had been restored.

“At this point, we have no reason to believe that customer and account information is at risk,” she said.

The computer assaults are a continuation of a campaign that began last month using commercial servers to overload bank websites with Internet traffic, temporarily disrupting and slowing online services for customers.

A group calling itself Izz ad-Din al-Quassam Cyber Fighters has claimed responsibility for the attacks in statements posted to the website pastebin.com, saying they are in response to a video uploaded to Google Inc.’s YouTube ridiculing the prophet Muhammad and offending some Muslims.

The group gave notice that distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks would continue Tuesday against Capital One, followed by SunTrust on Wednesday and Regions Financial on Thursday.