Hackers steal data from 83 million JP Morgan Chase customers in largest data breach in history

NEW YORK, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Hackers targeting JP Morgan Chase customers successfully stole personal information from 83 million people, marking the largest data breach in history.

The breach began in June and continued for two months until security officials with JP Morgan Chase detected the exposed information. All told, the breach affects 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. Bank officials believe the cyber-thieves accessed the information through external sites posing as the bank's actual site, similar to the process called 'phishing' Apple blamed for the ongoing celebrity nude photo leak.

Officials with JP Morgan Chase say hackers accessed addresses, email information and phone numbers, but claim customers' account numbers, passwords, user IDs, dates of birth and Social Security numbers were not exposed.

"The cynic in me says if [that additional data] were on the same system, they probably had access to it and they've probably taken it," Rob Sloane, head of ­cyber-data and content for Dow Jones Risk and Compliance told the New York Post.

Thus far, Chase has not reported any fraud claims related to the security breach.