US regional bank hacked

Hackers infiltrated the systems of Commerce Bank and accessed the records of 20 customers, the US regional bank said in October 2007.

The attack by persons unknown was partially thwarted - but not before a database of 3,000 records was hacked into and the data of 20 exposed. Compromised data included personal information such as names, addresses, Social Security numbers, phone numbers and, in a few cases, Commerce Bank account numbers, the Columbia Business Journal reports

Security staff shut down the attack and called in police to investigate after uncovering the breach a week ago. The FBI is investigating.

The method used in the attack is unclear, and something the bank will be keen that it stays unclear, to avoid the possibility of copycat attacks. There are many avenues of assault, of which one common tactic is to exploit web application vulnerabilities by using SQL injection attacksto access information of back-end databases. >> More ..