SpyEye Characteristics Now Incorporated Into Zeus: Trend Micro

According to security investigators at Trend Micro the security company, the development of Trojan SpyEye has been put on hold, while its characteristics in certain magnitude are being transferred onto the crime-ware toolkit namely Zeus. As a result, the earlier doubts that SpyEye and Zeus would be merged together are possibly turning real.

Notably, SpyEye and Zeus (or Zbot) equally represent malicious software that's used for fraud and they work like botnet clients, while bearing the same kinds of functionalities. Nevertheless, in relation to Zeus that emerged many years back SpyEye, which was unleashed in 2010-beginning, is more or less fresh.

Evidently, there were claims that SpyEye and Zeus had been combined for making one prominent network of bots. Reports stated that Monstr or Slavik, the creator of Zeus, had gone into hiding after handing over the source-code of his crime-ware kit to Harderman or Gribodemon, the creator of SpyEye.

Meanwhile, Trend Micro states that after doing a research of the underground world, they've found that the development of SpyEye has been stopped. According to the company, a particular SpyEye characteristic will be incorporated into Zeus' newer versions for including characteristics, which aren't going to be the core functionality of Zeus like finer routines for stealing information. Trend Micro Blog published this on November 25, 2010.

The research additionally discloses that SpyEye makes the utilization of plug-ins, which can be incorporated following Zeus crime-ware kit's purchase. Opposed to this, Zeus earlier utilized software, which required being incorporated as the crime-ware kit was traded off. Accordingly, fresh Zeus editions will, like SpyEye, utilize plug-ins. So, for a cyber-crook who wishes to include one fresh characteristic into his current SpyEye malware kit, all he requires doing is buying one fresh plug-in.

Remark security specialists that in case there's credibility in Trend's theory, it'll be exciting for observing whether analysts of malicious programs will manage in detecting Slavik's involvement vis-à-vis forthcoming versions, as it's said that every programmer uses an unique coding style that's his own.

Meanwhile according to the researchers, Slavik is not retiring but developing more tailored and targeted malware catering to sophisticated clients.

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» SPAMfighter News - 12/8/2010