U.S. Bancorp website targeted by purported Middle East group

U.S. Bancorp customers are experiencing intermittent delays with the institution’s website and online operations, spokesman Tom Joyce said. The site has not been taken down.

The Minneapolis bank was experiencing unusually high Web traffic and coordinated attacks “very similar” to what other major banks have experienced over the last two weeks, he said. Wells Fargo & Co.’s website was attacked Tuesday.

“We are working very closely with federal law enforcement,” Joyce said. “We can assure our customers first and foremost that their personal data and funds are secure.”

A site that tracks website outages, SiteDown.co, counted 56 customer reports of U.S. Bancorp’s website, www.usbank.com, being down as of midday.

Joyce said U.S. Bancorp’s ATM systems were working properly and that customers having trouble with mobile banking should call the bank at 1-800-US-BANKS or visit a local branch.

A computer security expert blamed massive denial of service attacks, in which perpetrators overwhelm computer servers with communications demands, causing networks to seize up or slow down.

In a posting at Pastebin.com, a group calling itself the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters claimed responsibility for last week’s outages at Bank of America, Citi, and JPMorgan before hitting U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo. It said it would attack U.S. Bancorp on Wednesday and PNC Financial Services on Thursday.

The posting said the attacks would continue until a video insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad was removed from the Internet.

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