BB&T Confirms It's the Latest Victim of Cyberattacks on U.S. Banks

A wave of cyberattacks on some of the nation's largest banks shows little sign of letting up.

BB&T (BBT), based in Winston-Salem, N.C., confirmed Thursday that customers who visited the bank's website Wednesday were unable to log on or experienced delays.

Capital One (COF), which was one of three banks targeted by hacktivists last week, also saw its websites disrupted again Tuesday. Both banks said the attacks came as a result of attackers' flooding the lines to prevent customers from retrieving their accounts.

"Capital One experienced online systems issues due to a denial of service attack on Tuesday," bank spokeswoman Tatiana Stead told American Banker. "The DDos attack resulted in a large amount of traffic sent over the Internet directed at our website with the intention to prevent normal services from working properly."

The bank said most customers remained able to bank online throughout the onslaught, and that its mobile banking services functioned normally.

"We can confirm that we did experience some intermittent outages on our website and we believe that it was due to the DNS event," BB&T spokeswoman Merrie Tolbert told American Banker. Tolbert added that BB&T is telling customers they may continue to experience delays when trying to log on to its website on Thursday.

The attacks bring to at least nine the number of U.S. banks targeted since Bank of America (BAC) experienced a similar attack in September. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last week called the attacks "unprecedented" in their velocity.

The Izz ad-Din al-Quassam Cyber Fighters, a group that has claimed responsibility for the offensive, vowed to continue through at least Thursday.

"These attacks will be done since Tuesday, 16 October until Thursday, 18 October 2012 in midday hours," the group wrote this week on a website used by programmers. "We know that banks officials are concerned and waiting to see this time it is the turn of which banks."

The group says it is waging the campaign in retaliation for an American-made, anti-Islamic film. A trailer for the movie that appeared on YouTube set off anti-American demonstrations last month in several Middle East countries.

Google, which owns YouTube, has refused to take down the video because it contends the clip comports with the service's guidelines governing content.

The latest attacks come amid reports that attackers with ties to the government of Iran have launched the attacks on banks. Though Panetta did not charge Iran with sponsoring the attacks, the secretary said the country has "undertaken a concerted effort to use cyberspace to its advantage." For its part, Iran has denied any role in the slowdowns.

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