By Robert Windrem and Jim Miklaszewski
NBC News

National security officials told NBC News that the continuing cyber attacks this week that slowed the websites of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are being carried out by the government of Iran. One of those sources said the claim by hackers that the attacks were prompted by the online video mocking the Prophet Muhammad is just a cover story.

A group of purported hackers in the Middle East has claimed credit for problems at the websites of both banks, citing the online video mocking the founder of Islam. One security source called that statement "a cover" for the Iranian government's operations.

The attack is described by one source, a former U.S. official familiar with the attacks, as being "significant and ongoing" and looking to cause "functional and significant damage." Also, one source suggested the attacks were in response to U.S. sanctions on Iranian banks.

The consumer banking website of Bank of America was unavailable to some customers on Tuesday, and JPMorgan Chase on Wednesday had the same problems, which multiple sources linked to a denial-of-service attack, in which a website is bogged down by a large number of requests. A Chase spokesman said Wednesday that the consumer site was intermittently unavailable to some customers, but did not acknowledge then that there was an attack. On Thursday, Chase said slowness continued but was resolved by late afternoon Eastern Time. Bank of America acknowledged on Tuesday that its site had experienced slowness, but would not say what caused it.

Senior U.S. officials acknowledge that Iranian attacks have been the subject of intense interest by U.S. intelligence for several weeks. Last week, the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Intelligence Directorate, known as J-2, confirmed continuing Iranian cyber attacks against U.S. financial institutions in a report described as "highly classified." The report was posted on internal classified U.S. government sites last Friday, September 14.

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Because of the level of classification, the officials refused to provide or confirm any specifics on these attacks. However, one official noted that Iran's uranium enrichment program had been the target of the STUXNET worm in 2010. The worm was reportedly developed by the U.S. and Israel. "The Iranians are very familiar with the environment,” quipped the official.

 

A conservative website, FreeBeacon.com, initially reported on the Pentagon analysis, quoting it as saying,  “Iran’s cyber aggression should be viewed as a component, alongside efforts like support for terrorism, to the larger covert war Tehran is waging against the west.” U.S officials did not deny the FreeBeacon report when queried by NBC News.

A financial services industry group,  the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, warned U.S. banks, brokerages and insurers late Wednesday to be on heightened alert for cyber attacks. FS-ISAC also raised its raised the cyber threat level to "high" from "elevated" in an advisory to members, citing "recent credible intelligence regarding the potential" for cyber attacks as its reason for the move.

The former head of cyber-security for the White House testified Thursday that “we were waiting for something like this from Iran.”  Frank Cilluffo, who served as Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, is currently an associate vice president at George Washington University and heads the Homeland Security Policy Institute. Cilluffo testified in a previously scheduled appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Homeland Security, saying “the government of Iran and its terrorist proxies are serious concerns in the cyber context. What Iran may lack in capability, it makes up for in intent.  They do not need highly sophisticated capabilities—just intent and cash—as there exists an arms bazaar of cyber weapons, allowing Iran to buy or rent the tools they need or seek.”

The statement by the purported Muslim hackers, posted on Tuesday on Pastebin, an online bulletin board, reads in full: "In the name of Allah the companionate the merciful. My soul is devoted to you Dear Prophet of Allah. Dear Muslim youths, Muslims Nations and are noblemen. When Arab nations rose against their corrupt regimes (those who support Zionist regime) at the other hand when, Crucify infidels are terrified and they are no more supporting human rights. United States of America with the help of Zionist Regime made a Sacrilegious movie insulting all the religions not only Islam. All the Muslims worldwide must unify and Stand against the action, Muslims must do whatever is necessary to stop spreading this movie. We will attack them for this insult with all we have. All the Muslim youths who are active in the Cyber world will attack to American and Zionist Web bases as much as needed such that they say that they are sorry about that insult. We, Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam will attack the Bank of America and New York Stock Exchange for the first step. These Targets are properties of American-Zionist Capitalists. This attack will be started today at 2 pm. GMT. This attack will continue till the Erasing of that nasty movie. Beware this attack can vary in type. Down with modern infidels. Allah is the Greatest. Allah is the Greatest."

There was no report of an attack on the New York Stock Exchange.

Also on Thursday, the U.S. disclosed that it has  bought $70,000 worth of air time on seven Pakistani television channels to air an ad which shows President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the anti-Islamic video. In the ad, President Obama says, "Since our founding the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate religious beliefs of others." Clinton appears after Obama and says, "Let me state very clearly that the United States has absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its contents. America's commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation."

Pakistan was added Wednesday to the State Department's list of countries to which Americans should avoid travel, joining Lebanon and Tunisia, following protests across the Middle East and North Africa and the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which American Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. 

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative correspondent for NBC News. Jim  Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. Patti Domm, executive news editor at CNBC and CNBC.com, contributed to this report.

Analysis: 'Manufactured outrage' behind Middle East protests

 

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Updated at 6:18 p.m. ET: About 800 people chanting and carrying signs (among them, "Banks got bailed out. We got sold out") marched Sunday through the central business district in Charlotte, N.C., ahead of the Democratic National Convention to protest what they said was seedy corporate influence on politics.

The protesters, who came from across the country, gathered at Frazier Park for a round of speeches before starting the march. They were from a coalition of more than 80 local and national groups. Media packets declared the group's mission as "building peoples' power during the DNC.

Demonstrators had signs indicating that some were union workers, anti-war veterans and undocumented immigrants. 

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"Capitalism is holding back the human race," one sign read. "Bail out people, not banks," another sign said.

The protest route was to take them past the corporate headquarters of Bank of America and a major office hub for Wells Fargo – financial institutions that some see as symbols of foreclosures and federal bailouts. Protesters also planned a stop at the headquarters of Duke Energy, the nation’s largest utility.

Duke has been criticized for investing in nuclear energy and using coal, according to the Charlotte Observer. Protesters have asked the company to focus on wind and solar power, which emit less carbon into the atmosphere. Duke, in defense, says it aims to retire its older coal plants.

Uniformed police officers on bicycles and on foot kept a close eye on the marchers. At least two people were arrested -- one for wearing a mask and carrying a concealed knife, and another for assaulting a government official, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, the Observer reported.

Ray Suarez, of PBS NewsHour, tweeted, "Just watched Occupy et. al. march through Charlotte, who were in turn watched by enough cops to invade a small country."

Before the main event began, a small press conference was held highlighting a woman, Sylvia Sanchez, who says she must pay $20,000 to Bank of America by Sept. 14 to avoid foreclosure on a home she's owned for 12 years. The woman, whose daughter is suffering from a brain condition called hydrocephalus, said she is in debt after having retrofitted the home with wheelchair ramps.

In interviews with NBC News, rank-and file-activists cited different reasons for coming.

Kendall Hale, a massage therapist and Obama campaign volunteer from Asheville, N.C., said that climate change was among her concerns.

"The era of compromise may not be working so well," Hale said. She urged President Obama to "forge ahead with the issues [he's] speaking about so eloquently."

Andie Marion, a college student also from the Asheville area, said her chief concern was "money in politics."

"The amount of corporate power that influences a lot of the politics I think is really huge," she said.

On the sidelines, Sunday's protest in Charlotte triggered a conversation about where the Occupy movement is headed. 

Todd Gitlin, who wrote Letters to a Young Activist and Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the promise of Occupy Wall Street, told NPR: "The initial wave moved its metaphors into the household conversation and shaped politics. But I think they essentially reached the limits of what they could achieve. Now there's a sorting process."

The Democratic National Convention opens Tuesday in Charlotte's Time Warner Cable Arena. President Barack Obama will be nominated for a new term on Wednesday. He will deliver his acceptance speech Thursday night at the outdoor Bank of America Stadium.

The convention starts less than a week after Republicans gathered in Tampa, Fla., to nominate Mitt Romney as the party's presidential candidate.

NBC's Jamie Novogrod and Mark Potter and contributed to this report.

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Which bank is the stingiest at handing out refunds to consumers who complain?  Wouldn't you like to know?

This story offers some insight into the first question, based on complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the past year.

This week, the bureau began offering consumers the chance to look into its massive database of complaints -- albeit in limited fashion. Only complaints filed since about June 1 – or 173 of the total of 42,000 -- are currently available for public viewing at the agency's website.

But msnbc.com obtained the full database of complaints under a Freedom of Information Act request and has done some crunching of the numbers. 

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The data on the bureau's website were limited, in part, because the agency is still tinkering with the way it logs complaints.  It has several times refined the way it describes complaint resolution, for example. That means data codified under the old system are of limited value to researchers, and to the public.

Still, with 42,000 entries, there are things to learn from the data.  For now, we're focusing on resolution involving consumers who complained they were hit with an unfair fee. There are 1,458 such complaints in the data.  Most of these complaints involved credit card accounts (a few involve student loans). 

Squeaky wheel
Of these fee-related complaints, 204 were labeled "closed without relief," meaning the bank gave no monetary compensation to the complainer, and another 45 were labeled "no resolution provided," for a total of 17 percent.  On the other hand, 424 were "closed with relief," and another 365 cases were designated "full resolution provided" – a winning percentage of 51 percent.  That shows the value of being a squeaky wheel, at least when it comes to fees. 

Various other designations, such as "misdirected," or "In progress" round out the results.

When considering data like this, it's of little use to count up totals and compare. It should be no surprise that really large banks like Bank of America attracted more complaints than medium-sized institutions like PNC Bank, for example.  But in the case of relief granted, a percentage of success or failure by consumers offers a little more information.

It turns out the J.P. Morgan Chase customers who complained were turned down least often among the 10 banks with the most fee-related complaints -- only about 10 percent were rejected, and conversely, 83 percent were granted relief and/or resolution.  GE Capital customers actually did a little better on the relief side, with 85 percent winning. Barclays, Capital One and Bank of America customers all got some kind of relief more than 70 percent of the time.

On the other side other side of the spectrum, US Bank customers fared the worst. Only 40 percent got relief; the same percentage were rejected by the bank (the data doesn't say what happened to the middle 20 percent). Also faring badly -- Citibank, Discover and American Express customers, who were rejected more than 25 percent of the time.  Capital One customers, despite their 70 percent success rate, were rejected 25 percent of the time.

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These results should be taken with a huge grain of salt. At this level of granularity the sample size is quite small -- with some banks, there were fewer than 50 fee-related complaints.  And the banking industry has valid concerns about the accuracy of the complaints. Nessa Feddis, spokeswoman for the American Bankers Association, correctly points out that a bank that has a particularly effective internal complaint resolution program could be wrongly portrayed as a bad actor by the CFPB data. 

"Maybe internally they have a 99 percent success rate and the only people who file with the bureau don't have a legitimate complaint, and that bank might look worst," she said.  "It would skew the percentages."

She also said banks with high “no relief” scores could simply be “(getting) it right the first time” when it comes to billing issues.

Feddis also complained more broadly about the idea that consumer complaints were being released to the public without vetting by a bureau official for legitimacy.

New consumer agency launches tell-all website

"Some people file complaints about a fee that they understood and agreed to and simply don’t want to pay, or they misremember,” she said. “There is simply no way to tell whether the complaint is valid or reasonable and the issuer doesn’t get to provide its side of the story. Hardly American due process."

Msnbc.com chose fee-related complaints for a reason. The chief criticism of the CFPB complaint database by the banking industry has surrounded the various designations for resolution. Initially, only consumers who received monetary compensation were designated as having obtained relief. When the banking industry complained that banks often offer non-monetary relief -- such as taking steps to improve a consumer’s credit score -- the bureau agreed and changed its coding system.

Fee-related complaints, however, offer a more clear data point for inspection: Consumers complaining about late fees, cash advance fees and balance transfer fees generally either get their money back, or they don't.  By limiting this analysis to fee-related complaints, the resolution data is still informative, with this caveat, provided on background by a person familiar with how the bureau’s database works:  A small percentage of consumers who were granted a fee waiver – as opposed to a refund – by their credit card issuer may have had their complaints coded as “without relief.”  The person said the number of entries impacted by that distinction wouldn’t skew the overall results.

Jen Howard, spokeswoman for the bureau, said it wouldn't comment on the msnbc.com results.

Here’s the top 10 list of most generous and most stingy banks, presented with the above caveats: 

 

 

JPMorgan Chase, the nation's largest bank, said Thursday it has lost $2 billion in a complex hedging strategy over the past six weeks and could lose more.

In a conference call to analysts and investors, CEO Jamie Dimon said the 'flawed' hedging strategy was "poorly constructed, poorly reviewed, poorly executed, and poorly monitored."

As a result, the bank expects to lose $800 million in its corporate segment this quarter, compared with previous estimates that the segment would post $200 million in profit. Some of the hedging losses were offset by taking $1 billion in previously unrealized gains from the bank's portfolio.

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"The portfolio has proved to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than we thought," Dimon said in the call, which was monitored by msnbc.com. "There were many errors, sloppiness and bad judgment."

The company's shares plunged more than 6 percent in late electronic trading after the loss was announced. Other bank stocks, including Citigroup and Bank of America suffered heavy losses as well.

Dimon said the bank suffered losses as a result of a strategy to hedge against global credit risk. He declined to specify further.

He said the bank is working through the problems but expects continued volatility, and losses could grow.

"Hopefully this will not be an issue by the end of the year," he said.

He said some of the losses were a result of the volatile market environment. Markets have been roiled recently by concerns over Europe, which has slipped back into recession.

The losses are still a relatively small amount compared to the approximately $200 billion portfolio managed by the company's chief investment office, where the hedging strategy was executed.

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