In January Government and corporate networks around the world were invaded by the Kneber botnet, which has created what may be a criminal underground. Kneber steals credentials and money and is not stopped by traditional protection systems.
More than half the 75,000 infected systems were also compromised by the Waledac peer-to-peer botnet – a worm that is capable of collecting and forwarding password information. It’s also capable of receiving commands from a remote server, including to upgrade malware components or to send out information from the infected computer.
The Zeus line of credential-stealing viruses infect a victims’ computer and watch for the user to log in to a particular banking site or a site which has value. In some variations it even triggered itself to open a connection. Once a connection is made, it transmits credentials. Hackers then log in and steal from people’s bank accounts.
The scarier side is for businesses where many banks are not insured against loss coming from these attacks because there is a waiver of liability whenthe business network becomes infected. There are cases of a half-million dollars being stolen through these attacks and banks say ‘Sorry, not our problem’.
Related Topics Botnet
Cybercriminal
Malware
Cyberattack
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A new Zeus botnet has been discovered affecting 75,000 systems in 2,500 organizations around the world.
