ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — An FIS executive told a group of credit union card managers meeting at Card Services for Credit Unions annual conference that denial of service attacks are often launched as ruses to enable wire fraud.

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Anthony Jabbour, executive vice president with FIS, told the group at his session last week that his experience working with credit unions had revealed that fraudsters would often launch fraudulent wire and other electronic transactions at the time a credit union or bank was distracted by a denial of service attack to strengthen the chances that the fraud would not be caught in time to prevent it.

Right at the point when the credit union's IT and other staff are overwhelmed with the attack, the questionable ACH transaction comes in  and is sometimes approved without sufficient checks, Jabbour told the meeting and added that FIS had been working on some tools financial institutions could use to counter the tactic.