SAN FRANCISCO — The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis confirmed on Tuesday that hackers had successfully hacked the bank, redirecting users of its online research services to fake websites set up by the attackers.
The breach was just the latest in a spate of hackings against government systems in recent months, affecting the White House, the State Department and even the president’s own email account.
In this case, the attack appeared to compromise the Internet’s routing system, known as the domain name system, or D.N.S thus was hacked.
In a statement issued late Monday, the St. Louis Fed informed those who use the bank’s public economic data and analysis tools that in late April it discovered the breach. The bank said hackers compromised the domain name registrar, which sends traffic to the St. Louis Fed, and was able to redirect the bank’s web traffic to rogue sites.