JPMorgan Chase says security breach affected 76 million accounts

JPMorgan Chase on Thursday reported that information about 76 million household accounts and 7 million small business accounts had been stolen by hackers, in one of the largest ever corporate data breaches.

The Wall Street giant said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the incident was limited to contact information such as people’s names and addresses.

{mosads}Despite the size of the incident, “there is no evidence” that people’s account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers or other personal or financial data were stolen in the hack, the bank said.

As of Thursday, the bank “continues not to have seen any unusual customer fraud related to this incident,” it added.

The new information about the scope of the hack — which reportedly began in June but was not discovered until July — comes just weeks after Home Depot announced that about 56 million shoppers’ credit and debit cards had been affected in a breach on its servers.

Unlike Home Depot, Target and other major retailers that have reported massive data breaches in recent months, however, the financial data held by banks is more serious. 

The hack reportedly triggered an investigation by the FBI and sent ripples through Wall Street.

Despite the recent string of high-profile hacking incidents, Congress has largely stalled on any effort to pass new data security or anti-hacking legislation.

Congressional committees’ overlapping jurisdiction on the issue as well as general gridlock on Capitol Hill and disagreement about how, precisely, to respond to the incidents has resulted in a deadlock on the issue.