Cybersecurity
World’s Biggest Bank Has to Trade Via USB Stick After Hack
- Incident caused ICBC’s clients to reroute some Treasury trades
- ‘A true shock to banks around the world,’ Truesec founder says
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On Thursday, trades handled by the world’s largest bank in the globe’s biggest market traversed Manhattan on a USB stick.
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.’s US unit had been hit by a cyberattack, rendering it unable to clear swathes of US Treasury trades after entities responsible for settling the transactions swiftly disconnected from the stricken systems. That forced ICBC to send the required settlement details to those parties by a messenger carrying a thumb drive as the state-owned lender raced to limit the damage.