UK Police Held Three Men for SpyEye Malware

The UK Police has held three men over a suspected scam which involves filching money from e- bank accounts that had been hacked using harmful software, as per the reports of theregister.co.uk on April 11, 2011. The group is suspected to have made use of banking Trojans, developed utilized the SpyEye cybercrime toolkit, to steal bank login data from hacked PCs.

Besides the arrests of Pavel Cyganoc, 26, Aldis Krummins, 45, and a 26-year-old unnamed suspect, police have also caught PC equipments and information. The investigation is continuing.

Sean Bodmer, Senior Threat Analyst at Damballa said that these arrests won't affect the gang's activities, as per the reports by eWEEK on April 11, 2011.

Bodmer stated that, unfortunately, the arrested suspects are not the important malware creators behind SpyEye creation. He added that Damballa had information regarding 4 developers behind the Trojan, which had been collected by thoroughly searching the botnet's command-and-control servers. Bodmer also said that not any of the names and ages matches the data of the detained suspects.

Bodmer stated that it proves hard for the law enforcement to trace out the key members of the SpyEye group because they utilize several names and several VPN (Virtual private network) services to conceal their tracks. Further, they have a "smart" chain-of-command, where the creators are eliminated from daily operations of the botnets as well as crimeware kit.

Agreeing with Bodmer's view to some extent, Fred Touchette, Senior Security Analyst with security firm AppRiver stated that even relatively small arrests like these give a message that the law enforcement will not tolerate such activities and it has the potential to catch the attackers, as per the reports by pcworld.com on April 11, 2011.

AppRiver's, Security Researcher Troy Gill agrees with Touchette's view that the arrests convey a message. He states that the arrests intervene with the criminal activity and conveys the message to others that there is a risk involved in cybercrime. Gill says that details gathered from these low-level players might help in tracking the major SpyEye source, as per the news by pcworld.com on April 11, 2010.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 20-04-2011

All SPAMfighter products offer a free trial!

SPAMfighter is a free spam filter for Outlook, Outlook Express,Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird.

Optimize your Slow PC for better performance. Try FREE scan now

Disk space recovery
and disk optimization. Try FULL-DISKfighter free

SPAMfighter Exchange Module is a Spam filter for Exchange server - Free 30 days trial.

Remove Spyware with SPYWAREfighter - Free 30 days trial

Antivirus software for your Windows PC - Free 30 days trial