Fed and OCC Check Banks After Binance Theft

Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency supervisors began contacting U.S. banks on November 2 to ask about unusual activity and service disruptions after the October 29 theft from cryptocurrency exchange Binance, according to people familiar with the outreach. The checks were precautionary; the reporting does not establish that any U.S. bank was breached or found vulnerable to the attack methods. Banks were also examining their cybersecurity systems after the theft, which was reported as involving about $6.3 billion. People familiar with the work said financial institutions were running diagnostics to assess whether their defenses could withstand similar tactics. The inquiries focused on potential effects on banks, not on a reported disruption to the U.S. banking system. One source at a contacted bank said its services had not been disrupted and that it had received few customer inquiries. Employees had prepared talking points in case customers asked about the incident, the source said. That account concerns one bank and does not describe the status of every institution contacted. Within hours of the Binance attack, a cybersecurity team at one of the...