BARCELONA -- Professional hackers are behind an increase in
cyber attacks in recent months, an executive for AT&T Inc. (T)
said Wednesday, adding that the company has seen such attacks
double in number over the last four months.
"We used to see it come in huge waves. Now we're seeing smaller
attacks coming up the stack. So they're getting smarter," Frank
Jules, AT&T's president of global business solutions, said at
the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference in Barcelona.
"They're inside your systems and they're testing, testing,
testing every day for weak spots," Mr. Jules said.
AT&T's disclosure comes as attackers have been targeting
major companies in high-profile attacks that have hobbled websites.
In September, such attacks hit J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells
Fargo & Co. (WFC) and Bank of America Corp (BAC). AT&T's
networks were involved in some of those attacks, Mr. Jules
said.
"The banks are under siege," he said.
Mr. Jules declined to comment on who has been behind the wave of
attacks, saying AT&T is cooperating with investigators. But he
characterized the hackers as "professionals"
AT&T hopes to cash in on a rising need for security, with
services to help stave off so-called denial-of-service attacks, for
instance, which intend to interrupt services for users. Mr. Jules
predicted that cyber security could become a $40 billion industry,
and that security will become a "billion-dollar business for
us."
-Write to Sam Schechner and Sven Grundberg, The Wall Street
Journal, sam.schechner @wsj.com
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