Cyber attacks on Hong Kong banks escalate

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority confirmed that cyber criminals are using both sophisticated and commonplace means to breach financial institutions' firewalls with increasing regularity.

Information provided to the HKMA by banks operating in the Territory indicate there were 17 reported cases related to distributed denial-of-service DDoS attempts so far in 2015, the HKMA told FinanceAsia. Among those breached were the Hong Kong unit of Malaysia's Public Bank and Hong Kong wealth manager Kowloon Global.

There were three such attacks -- a particularly malicious form of cyber-assault -- in all of 2014, the monetary authority said.

Cyber-attacks on financial institutions in this Asian...