London Police Detains 19 For Online Bank Heist

The London Metropolitan Police Central E-Crime Unit recently busted a complex cyber-crime gang, detaining 19 individuals who allegedly attacked Internet bank accounts and took away 6m pounds.

The suspects apparently infiltrated massive numbers of PCs employing malicious code and subsequently filched money from the bank accounts of various people. The code employed was Zbot/Zeus, a keylogging Trojan that basically steals banking information.

Talking about the incident, Terry Wilson, Detective Chief Inspector and leader of the investigation team stated that it was their conviction that they had dismantled a criminal network that was highly organized as also had employed sophisticated techniques for transferring huge funds from numerous unwary inhabitants' accounts. The heist resulted in a lot of financial damage and personal anxiety that, for certain, banks would have to compensate with significant effects on the economy, he explained. Softpedia.com published this on September 29, 2010.

Besides according to the Inspector, he has a feeling that officials belonging to the police department will unearth additional filched cash as the case's probe proceeds further.

Alongside, Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley at Sophos the security company blogged that there was need for appreciating the police which unearthed the illegal websites designed to help the online fraudsters. V3.co.uk published this on September 29, 2010. Cluley, nevertheless, thinks that the latest arrests do not imply that Zeus attacks will no longer exist since the malware is still available on illegal websites for purchase by other cyber-criminals.

Indeed, Online Security Expert Christian Brindley at VeriSign Authentication lately noted that a number of Zeus-related attacks had been discovered. V3.co.uk reported this.

Brindley added that it was simply possible for anybody to purchase a Zeus toolkit from the Web implying that it wasn't essential that only sophisticated cyber-criminals were threatening towards grabbing people's private information.

Meanwhile, arrests of people by police in connection with utilizing the Zeus malware for theft of money aren't something new. During November 2009, a husband-and-wife was detained in Manchester (UK) because they committed the same offence. This therefore shows the degree of danger associated with the malware as also the number of hackers who're increasingly using it.

Related article: LendingTree Clients Warned of Data Theft

» SPAMfighter News - 10/6/2010