Viruses, whether virtual or real, have impacted our lives. If the virus is well known, more likely it caused a lot of damage and grief to people around the world. Virtual viruses, like worms and trojans, have been known to corrupt or steal sensitive information from one’s computer. Here is one of the most well known computer viruses in the last century:
Zeus(2007)
Zeus is a Trojan horse that steals banking information by Man-in-the-browser keystroke logging and Form Grabbing. Zeus is spread mainly through drive-by downloads and phishing schemes. First identified in July 2007 when it was used to steal information from the United States Department of Transportation, it became more widespread in March 2009. In June 2009, security company Prevx discovered that Zeus had compromised over 74,000 FTP accounts on websites of such companies as the Bank of America, NASA, Monster.com, ABC, Oracle, Play.com, Cisco,Amazon, and BusinessWeek. Zeus is a financial malware. It infects consumer PCs, waits for them to log onto a list of targeted banks and financial institutions, and then steals their credentials and sends them to a remote server in real time.
There is no shortage of malware kits that target personal information, but Zeus has become the go-to tool for many of today’s cyber criminals and is readily available for sale in the cyber crime underworld. It can be used to pilfer passwords as well as files, helping to create a literal underground economy for compromised identities that can be bought and sold for as little 50 cents. In the age of Internet banking and online shopping, a compromised identity is much more than just a name and social security number: it’s your address, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, and even your secret security questions (your first pet, your favorite teacher, or your best friend from grade school).
ZeuS was sort of a “genius source code” that was developed to be bought and sold on the underground market. The computer pc fraud gangs that circulate around these markets bought and used the toolkit with the Trojan Horse (ZeuS).
How can you tell if your machine is infected?
- The Zeus trojan will commonly use names like NTOS.exe, LD08.exe, LD12.exe,PP06.exe, PP08.exe, LDnn.exeand PPnn.exeetc, so search your PCs for files with names like this. The Zeus Trojan will typically be between 40KBytes and 150Kbytes in size.
- Also look for a folder with the name WSNPOEM, this is also a common sign of infection for the Zeus Trojan.
- Finally, check the Registry looking for RUN keys referencing any of these names.
This virus truly lives up to its name. It was named after the greek god of gods, Zeus. Though this is not the “god of all viruses”, many still fear this virus. It is very powerful and can cause people and company thousands to even millions of money to be stolen from them. Truly Zeus is a force to be reckoned with.
