What’s new: A New York City subsidiary of China’s largest bank said that a ransomware attack on Wednesday U.S. Eastern time had “resulted in disruption” to its systems.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Financial Services LLC (ICBCFS) said in a statement that it had been making recovery efforts after isolating the impacted systems. An investigation is also underway.
Meanwhile, the company has cleared U.S. Treasury trades executed Wednesday and repo financing trades done Thursday, according to the statement.
ICBCFS is fully owned by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC) (601398.SH), the world’s largest lender by assets.
“The systems of the ICBC head office and other domestic and overseas affiliated institutions were not affected by this incident, nor was the ICBC New York branch,” the subsidiary said.
The background: Ransomware is a type of malware “designed to encrypt files on a device, rendering any files and the systems that rely on them unusable,” according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Hackers usually demand a ransom from victims to restore access.
As a member of the U.S. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, ICBCFS provides clearing, execution and financing services to institutional clients, including broker-dealers, hedge funds and global banks, according to the company’s website.
Contact reporter Qing Na (qingna@caixin.com) and editors Lin Jinbing (jinbinglin@caixin.com) and Bertrand Teo (bertrandteo@caixin.com)
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