US banks may have embarked upon a hacking campaign of their own, allegedly disabling servers used by Iran in a series of cyberattacks from 2012 into 2013.

Bloomberg is reporting that the FBI is investigating whether US financial institutions have started fighting back against hackers.

US Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) has described the state of cyberattacks as "kind of a Wild West right now," remarking that US companies have been launching cyberattacks without government permission.

It's reported that JPMorgan Chase proposed to the FBI that the bank work from offshore locations to disable the servers used to launch denial of service attacks against its website. But attendees of the meeting dismissed the idea over concerns of its legality.

Despite ruling out the proposed hack, Bloomberg reports that US investigators found that a third party had carried out the attack after all. Now the FBI is investigating whether US companies broke the law in ordering the hack against the Iranian servers.

Sony Pictures, the movie studio targeted by hackers, allegedly used Amazon Web Services to try to disrupt people downloading the files leaked as part of the hack.