The New York Times Thursday, Oct. 2, erroneously reported JPMorgan has suffered a second network hack attack for this year but then corrected its story after the banking institution denied the report.
The lone breach, says the bank, occurred this past June.
"The story is false. We are not aware of any new attacks," said Trish Wexler, a JPMorgan spokeswoman.
The June hack involved thieves taking advantage of a flaw in the bank's website to access its system and it went undetected for a total of two months. JPMorgan is admitting it may have impacted 76 million households and 7 million small businesses.
It says it has not detected any unusual fraudulent activity related to the incident. By the time the hack was discovered, hackers had already gained control of 90 computer servers.
The hackers also got away with a list of applications and programs that are run on each computer
"There is no evidence that account information for such affected customers -- account numbers, passwords, user IDs, dates of birth or Social Security numbers -- was compromised during this attack," said the bank in an SEC filing. "User contact information -- name, address, phone number and email address -- and internal JPMorgan Chase information relating to such users have been compromised."
The bank assured customers they would not be held responsible for any fraudulent activity and that it would continue to investigate the issue. Not only that, but JPMorgan says it also plans on spending around $250 million annually to better its cybersecurity and protect itself.
"In our existing environment and at our company, cybersecurity attacks are becoming increasingly complex and more dangerous," said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. "The threats are coming in not just from computer hackers ... but also from highly coordinated external attacks both directly and via third-party systems."
The size of the JPMorgan breach is even larger that a recent cyberattack against Home Depot, which affected 56 million customers and is considered to be the largest retail hack in history.
