September 11, 2013 - US banks could face a wave of distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) hits today to mark the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, warns the FBI.

At the end of last month the FBI issued an alert - summarised by the Massachusetts Bankers Association - warning banks to expect a two phase attack, dubbed #OpUSA, to take place this month, cumulating on the anniversary of 9/11.

The bureau says banks should take the threat - understood to come from within the loose Anonymous collective - seriously, making sure that they have a data backup and recovery plan in place.

However, the alert suggests that the attackers are likely to be relying on commercial tools to exploit known vulnerabilities, meaning that any success they have should be restricted to temporary Web site disruptions.

In its own notice, the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center has offered similar advice to banks and posted a long list of potential bank targets, which originally appeared in a Pastebin post.

The list contains the same names targeted in the first #OpUSA campaign in May, which failed.