Zeus - The Most Dangerous Banking Trojan

Director of Global Research and Analysis Team Costin Raiu for Kaspersky Lab was speaking at the Security Analyst Summit of Kaspersky Lab in Cyprus, when he pointed out that albeit Trojan Zeus calmed down during 2006, it currently continued to be the most used banker Trojan online. Also, it is still making massive revenues for online crooks all over the world, he said. Itweb.co.za reported this on June 7, 2010.

States Raiu that this Trojan presently has thousands of variants that criminals also put up for sale. Accordingly, it costs just about $500 to get the complete package containing the 'generic' variant. Conversely, one can buy the complete package containing the 'exclusive' variant, which can be suited for adding custom features for different malicious purposes, for $3,000-$5,000, the Director adds.

Indeed, he informed all attendees at the conference that the Trojan is quite easy to customize such that it serves any specific requirement. Further it was very easy to encrypt the malware, while concealing it from AV software running on an end-user's computer.

Moreover, according to Raiu's statistics, the Trojan infected 16,000 users daily during March 2010. The reason for this is that it's executed on the world's most prosperous infrastructure, the botnet.

During February 2010, NetWitness, the security company, exposed a botnet which had 74,000 computers contaminated with Zeus Trojan. That botnet helped to capture login credentials with which e-mail systems, banking websites, and social-networking websites could be accessed. Security researchers called it the Kneber botnet, alternatively Wsnpoem or ZBot.

Fascinatingly, it isn't only Kaspersky which's talking of exclusive Zeus variants. Security company Symantec in its most recent Internet Security Threat Report reveals almost 90,000 distinct versions of Zeus seen during 2009.

In addition, as Raiu outlines, the threat from this malware appears to be escalating. Assessing along the same line of outcomes as reflected in Kaspersky's March 2010 statistics, Trusteer, another security company, too reported that the Zeus1.4 variant contaminated 1 in 3,000 PCs in the UK and North America alone starting April 21, 2010.

Consequently, the malware has once again become severe for all people around the world, the company noted.

Related article: Zeus Trojan Stole Huge Amount of Information

» SPAMfighter News - 6/17/2010