Fri Dec 21, 2012 2:32pm EST

n">(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co customers on Friday had trouble accessing the bank's Web site for a fourth day, as a federal regulator reiterated the need for banks to have systems in place to ward off cyber attacks.

A spokeswoman for the No. 4 U.S. bank by assets said some customers may have intermittent access to their online banking, although the high volume of traffic that has flooded the site has declined.

"Our technical teams have been working around the clock to ensure our Web site is accessible to our customers," bank spokeswoman Bridget Braxton said. The bank has been posting apologies on its Twitter account.

Since September, a hacker activist group called the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has said it was targeting major banks with so-called denial of service cyber attacks. These attacks can disrupt service by deluging Web sites with high traffic.

On Tuesday, the group said in an Internet posting that it would target the "5 major US banks." In a similar posting last week, it forecast attacks against banks that included PNC Financial Services Group Inc and U.S. Bancorp, which reported some disruptions.

A PNC spokesman on Friday said the bank's systems were operating normally. Spokespersons for Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and U.S. Bancorp declined to comment. Citigroup Inc could not be immediately reached.

In its alert on Friday, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks and thrifts, said groups launching denial of service attacks had varying motives, from gaining public attention to diverting the attention of banks while launching simultaneous attacks to commit fraud or steal proprietary information.

"Banks need to have a heightened sense of awareness regarding these attacks and employ appropriate resources to identify and mitigate the associated risks," the alert said.

Banks should have sufficient staffing during attacks, work with third-party providers and share information with other banks, the OCC said.

Of five major banks, Wells Fargo on Friday had spurred the most complaints from users about access problems, according to the Web site SiteDown.co, which tracks customer reports. It listed 576 "downtime reports" in the past 24 hours.

Wells Fargo says it has 21 million active online banking customers.

(Reporting By Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, N.C.; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

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TAIPEI Aug 2 (Reuters) - Torrential rain and strong winds triggered landslides and flooding, forcing financial markets to shut and disrupting transport, after Typhoon Saola made landfall in eastern Taiwan on Thursday, authorities said.

At least one person was killed in a landslide and eight injured in the storm.

While some major companies remained open, Taiwanese authorities ordered other businesses and schools to close. Financial markets were also shut, with normal operations expected to resume on Friday.

Most domestic flights were cancelled, along with some international services. Train services were also stopped as the typhoon made its way up Taiwan's less populated and mountainous east coast.

Taiwan's National Fire Agency said one person had been killed in a landslide in the central region of Chiayi. Eight people were injured, most in falls from motorcycles.

The agency also said a policeman had died of a heart attack.

Three of Taiwan's top technology exporters, chipmakers TSMC and Nanya Tech and LCD panel maker AU Optronics, said none of their facilities were affected and were running as normal.

Saola is currently rated a category 2 typhoon on a scale of five and was expected to weaken to a category 1 within 12 hours as it passed Taiwan and headed for southeast China, meteorologists said.

A separate system, Typhoon Damrey , has not affected Taiwan a nd is expected to pass north of China's financial hub of Shanghai on Friday but will weaken to a tropical storm.

China's meteorological agency issued typhoon warnings on Thursday for the southern and eastern provinces of Fujian and Jiangsu. On Tuesday, China's Premier Wen Jiabao told authorities to be on the highest alert.

Wen, who usually leaves more junior leaders to oversee arrangements before storms, told authorities to step up preparations and "put people's lives first", the official Xinhua news agency said. (Reporting by Jonathan Standing, Clare Jim and Faith Hung in TAIPEI and Sui-lee Wee in BEIJING; Editing by Paul Tait)

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