FBI investigating customer data hack at major US banks

Some of the nation’s biggest banks were scrambling on Saturday night to assess the fallout from a large-scale hack of a vendor whose compromise could expose sensitive customer data.

- ROB COPELAND STACY COWLEY DEVLIN BARRETT

The vendor, SitusAMC, has been deployed by hundreds of banks and other lenders to help originate and collect money from real estate loans and mortgages. The company confirmed on Saturday that it had been the subject of a cyberattack on Nov 12 and that it had spent the better part of two weeks trying to determine exactly what data had been taken. The data exposed was related to residential loan mortgages, the company said.

JPMorgan Chase, Citi and Morgan Stanley are among those that have been notified by SitusAMC that their client data may have been taken, according to five people who were briefed on the hack but who were not able to discuss it publicly.

Representatives for those banks would not comment on their exposure. A JPMorgan spokesman said the bank had not been hacked directly.