Man Arrested for Breaking into Apartment & Loaded Spyware to Steal Bank Details

According to news reports from Japan, a man has been arrested for allegedly breaking into another man's house and planting spyware on his PC.

The police said that 37-year-old Takamasa Kondo, the culprit, stole the keys of a Tokyo apartment that was kept in the apartment's mailbox, entered the premise and installed the BugBear virus on the victims' computer. According to experts, the BugBear virus contains keylogging software used for recording computer keystrokes.

As the innocent apartment owner accessed his online bank account, Kondo was able to remotely read the man's bank details that he used to transfer 9 Million Yen (about US$ 100,000) from the victim's account to a third party account from where he finally withdrew the money.

However, the victim came to know about the theft as well as the illegal use of his credit card in January 2008 when he used his account. Thus, he informed the police who after a several months hunt tracked down Kondo to eventually take him into custody in July 2008 for engaging in fraudulent activity.

The police also disclosed that Kondo possessed details of about 20 people's bank accounts, and they are still investigating.

Meanwhile, Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant, Sophos, writes on his blog some unusual and interesting points about the hacking incident. The first is about the hacker installing the malware without using any intermediary. Although this is not the first case as such, Cluley said that it is more likely for cyber criminals not to get personally involved in the risk of infecting someone else's computer but to accomplish the task by hiding malware behind websites and e-mail, as reported by Sophos on January 27, 2009.

The second point is related to the BugBear virus that Cluley points out is linked to the past. During 2002-03, this virus had exploded, proliferating rapidly through network shares and e-mail attachments, and aided by the exploitation of a Microsoft security flaw.

Moreover, in June 2003, MessageLabs, a security company, issued an important warning after it identified a new BugBear variant that it dubbed W32/Bugbear.B-mm. Since then, Microsoft has issued patches to address the threat.

Related article: Man Sues and Wins against ISP for Spamming Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 2/14/2009