JP Morgan Chase, one of the largest banks in America has admitted that a JP Morgan Chase data breach has affected 76 million customers, and seven million small businesses, the Guardian reports.
Forbes reports that the cyber attack does not quite surpass the numbers of people affected by the Target data breach in late 2013, but that it does comprise half of all U.S. households.
JP Morgan Chase confirmed the figures in an SEC filing. The information which leaked included contact information such as names, email addresses and phone numbers, as well as physical addresses.
Such information can be useful to cyberattackers, but JP Morgan was at pains to point out that the financial fallout from the breach was unlikely to be on the scale of breaches such as the Target or Home Depot breaches.
JP Morgan Chase data breach: ‘Money safe’
On Chase.com, the bank reassured customers, ‘Your money at JPMorgan Chase is safe. Unlike recent attacks on retailers, we have seen no unusual fraud activity related to this incident.”
“We are very sorry that this happened and for any uncertainty this may cause you. We don’t believe that you need to change your password or account information.”
Nonetheless, the bank reassured customers that they would not be held responsible for fraudulent transactions against their accounts.
Hackers steal gigabytes of data
The attack has attracted a great deal of attention due to the amount of sensitive information that bank systems hold, the Guardian commented.
The FBI claimed that the hackers had been able to extract ‘gigabytes of sensitive data’, from more than 90 servers.
The attack began in June, but was not discovered in July this year.
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