Tuesday it was Wells Fargo among others, and Wednesday it was PNC Bank’s website that was hit by a group of Middle Eastern hackers , making the site unavailable to PNC users. The problems were still intermittently affecting consumers on Thursday. Most of the problems seemed to occur when customers attempted to log in, with slow load times or timeouts occurring.
“We are working to restore full service to everyone,” spokesman Fred Solomon told the Chicago Tribune .
U.S. Bank, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have also been hit.
Newsday reported that on a website called Pastebin.com, a group claimed responsibility for the disruptions in service, saying the attacks were related to the offensive Innocence of Muslims film and film trailer that have recently been in the headlines and drawing outrage from many Muslims.
The posts by the group claimed the attacks on PNC and other banks would continue until the video was completely removed from the internet. No connection between any of the banks and the film was reported.
While the attacks could be a result an independent hacker group or a terrorist cell, independent Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said he believed that Iran was behind the attacks on PNC and other American financial institutions.
U.S. Bank is part of U.S. Bancorp, while PNC is part of PNC Financial Services Group. The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group, raised its cyber threat level to “high” from “elevated” last week as a result of cyber attacks.
It was not reported if any user information had been compromised by the hackers.