New Trojan Has Silently Transferred $US1m Out Of Bank Accounts

A new version of the Zeus virus has been silently stealing money from bank accounts since early last month, according to M86 Security. They say they’ve “never seen such a sophisticated and dangerous threat”. Oh. Wonderful.

Since early last month, the Zeus v3 trojan has managed to steal roughly a million dollars from over 3000 accounts, all customers of an unnamed British bank. The trojan infecting Windows machines through exploits in Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader, among other software, the M86 researchers say, and then lies in wait until the user logs into his bank account. If the account has more than £800 (about $US1250), it siphons that money into a mule account. Kinda like Robin Hood, but with a very different definition of stealing from the “rich”.

Apparently most antivirus software can’t detect the trojan yet, so M86 is advising people to stay vigilant about their online banking. Or you could just keep £799 in your account

[Telegraph via CrunchGear]