Today’s Security Hacks Are After More Than Bank Info

Today’s Security Hacks Are After More Than Bank Info: The beat goes on. In recent weeks, both JP Morgan Chase and Home Depot have been identified as the latest victims of large-scale cyberattacks.

JP Morgan Chase was among a handful of U.S. banks hit by hackers in a series of attacks in August. A few days later, Krebs on Security released details about a spring attack on Home Depot. The scope of the attack has not yet been determined, but it could be bigger than last year’s Target breach. Oh, and investigators found another Healthcare.gov hack in July, too.

This is bad news for consumers – but such attacks carry potentially heavier weight than just stealing John Doe’s bank login or credit card information. When the hackers behind the Home Depot attack posted credit card information on the black market, for example, they labeled it “American Sanctions.”

“It’s political hactivism,” says Charles Tendell, founder and CEO of Azorian Cyber Security, a white hat hacker with a background of cybersecurity work for the federal government. “In a lot of cases, they’ve got a statement they want to make.”

McAfee estimates that the annual cost to the global economy from cybercrime is somewhere between $375 billion to $575 billion. “Even the smallest of these figures is more than the national income of most countries and governments,” the firm said in a cybercrime report released in June. They also predicted that the cost of cybercrime and losses from theft of intellectual property will continue to rise.