Hacker Group Points Briefly to PNC's Website

One of two groups that claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on one bank last week may be eyeing at least one other financial institution.

Anonymous, a hacker collective that said Oct. 18 it launched a so-called denial of service attack against HSBC (HBC), sent a series of tweets Thursday that linked to an online banking website belonging to PNC Financial (PNC) before deleting the messages.

A PNC spokeswoman confirmed the link pointed to the bank's secure online banking website but declined to comment on the tweets.

The bank's website site appeared to be functioning normally on Thursday based on the absence of complaints logged by Sitedown.co, which tracks website outages.

The feint by Anonymous comes amid a cessation of attacks by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters Group, which has claimed responsibility for digital assaults on at least ten financial institutions worldwide since September.

Though the group said Tuesday it would stop strikes temporarily in honor of Eid al-Adha, a Muslim holiday, American Banker reported Thursday the group called off the attacks to avoid being caught after investigators linked the code used in both the so-called denial of service attacks against banks and similar strikes in January against the Tel Aviv stock exchange and El Al, Israel's national airline.

The attacks, which are expected to continue, flood lines that connect banks to the Internet to slow service and prevent customers from retrieving their accounts.

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