Syrians being Increasingly Targeted with Banking Trojan

Researchers at Kaspersky the security company caution Syrians that Zeus the Trojan that steals banking information endangers all Syrian users conducting banking transactions online.

Significantly, the Zeus banker Trojan that made its debut during 2007 captures usernames and passwords of users operating Windows computers so the perpetrators may illicitly siphon cash from their victims' bank accounts.

Worryingly, the malware has around 40,000 variants in record. During February 2010, NetWitness a corporate security organization based in USA reported that 2,500 companies across 196 countries had Zeus-infected PCs.

This issue came up in October 2010 at the Sixth Information and Communications Technology Security Forum in Syria. At that time Managing Director Tarek Kuzbari of Kaspersky Lab, ME asserted that the malware represented a growing risk to the banking industry in Syria.

He said that the malware could prove extremely perilous if users' Web-browsers were unprotected or unwary since unscrupulous criminals could compromise and misuse their banking details along with additional important information stored on the Internet against the users' names. Forwardsyria.com published this on November 11, 2010.

Sadly, through the above statement, Kaspersky seems to be saying that there'll be an increase in Zeus attacks in Syria as an increasing population there adopts Internet banking.

This prediction, apparently, has received the support of Trusteer another security company that also emphasized lately that fraud losses because of Zeus in particular was about to become threefold during 2011. Trusteer said that that would be because of an increasing Zeus distribution as well as the dearth of anti-virus agencies' coverage for the same.

In fact according to security specialists, in spite of major catches in the Ukraine, U.K and U.S of online crooks employing Zeus for theft of Internet accounts, Zeus is likely to develop and continue as a successful theft program over an extended period of time.

Eventually Kaspersky states that to mitigate Zeus' threat, users must update their operating systems and use a security suite that contains a firewall, an anti-spyware, an anti-virus and a vulnerability scanner. Besides, improved cooperation is needed among Syrian banks, security researchers who track Zeus gangs and agencies of law enforcement.

Related article: Soaring phishing Attacks versus Perishing Defenses

» SPAMfighter News - 11/19/2010