New York Unit of Worlds Largest Bank Becomes Ransomware Victim

The ransomware attack on ICBC Financial Services caused disruption of trading of U.S. Treasuries and marked a new level of breach that could have massive repercussions.

When we saw the attack on the Colonial Pipeline back in 2021, the impact was felt throughout the Southeast United States. Any attack on key businesses that keeps an economy running will have some form of impact should the attack be successful.

And that’s exactly what happened when the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s New York unit responsible for ensuring brokers’ trades and transactions in U.S. Treasuries went through.

While not much is known about the specifics of the attack, according to the Wall Street Journal, ICBC had to disconnect affected systems and was unplugged from the Treasury. Any trades placed had to be manually cleared.

This kind of attack signals that despite banks feeling like they may be impenetrable due to concerted cybersecurity efforts, they can still become a victim. The implications are that it’s possible for entire markets to come to a halt from a single cyber attack.

According to recent industry data, the financial services market saw a 121% increase in phishing attacks in Q3 of this year. This indicates a massive focus on increased attacks on this industry from bad actors. While security solutions will stop a material amount of attacks, many phishing attacks still make their way to your users' Inbox. This will require your users to become part of your organization’s security stance – something taught through new-school security awareness training.

KnowBe4 enables your workforce to make smarter security decisions every day. Over 65,000 organizations worldwide trust the KnowBe4 platform to strengthen their security culture and reduce human risk.