Zeus Hassles Online Banking Users

As per the findings of security firm Trusteer, it is for the first time that a fresh variant of data-stealing Trojan Zeus has been successful in exploiting the browser of Mozilla's Firefox in order to commit high-profile Internet banking fraud.

It is learnt that Zeus is the most common type of financial malware at present and is known for stealing the banking details of the victims.

The fresh Zeus variant aims at Firefox browser through HTML injections and transaction tampering, thus it is able to effectively evade strong authentication as well as transaction signing.

Amit Klein, chief technology officer, Trusteer, stated that this Zeus version is expected to give a significant boost to fraud losses, as around 30% of netizens go for net banking with Firefox browser and the infection is spreading at such a rate that has ever be witnessed before, as per the news published by BBC on April 21, 2010.

In addition to this, Trusteer claimed that Zeus has been spotted by it in one of every 3,000 PCs. The firm monitored 5.5 Million computers across the UK and the US. It further added that the Zeus 1.6 can infect Firefox and Internet Explorer users.

Meanwhile, spokesperson for Mozilla informed that Zeus is not abusing any vulnerability in Firefox, but it infiltrates a system that has already been infected, reported SCMagazine on April 22, 2010. Once Zeus gets into the system, it poses risk to every program run on the system, added the spokesperson.

CEO of Trusteer, Mickey Boodaei said that to meet the expanded threat, the industry needs to strengthen its protection strategy, as reported by the Security Watch on April 16, 2010.

Boodaei further added that the good aspect is that an increasing number of websites are now providing superior software for enhancing online security, without any charge. Even then users need to be cautious of this threat. Ensuring online security involves users adopting a multi-layered approach for their system's protection.

Related article: Zeus Trojan Stole Huge Amount of Information

» SPAMfighter News - 5/1/2010