Washington, June 10: The US government has warned financial institutions about a virus-like infection that has targeted computers at roughly 1,200 banks worldwide, trying to steal corporate passwords. The FBI is investigating what private security experts believe to be the first Internet attack aimed primarily at a single economic sector. Virus experts studying the blueprints for the latest threat to Internet users were astonished to find inside the software code a list of roughly 1,200 Web addresses for many of the world's largest financial institutions, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., American Express Co., Wachovia Corp., Bank of America Corp. and Citibank N.A.

The destructive infection, known as "BugBear.B" has spread to tens of thousands of consumer computers across the Internet since last week, but investigators and industry experts said they were unaware if any financial institutions had been significantly affected. Industry executives told US Treasury Department officials and other banking regulators during a meeting yesterday in Washington that while they were concerned that the infection targeted them, they were unaffected because of tight corporate security.
The infection "was hammering the outside servers but it was being rejected," said Suzanne Gorman, head of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a bank cyber security organisation working with the US government. According to her, "People weren't reporting that it got through to their personal organisations." Bureau Report