Zeus v3 trojan steals more than £675,000 from UK bank

The latest version of the trojan Zeus has done unauthorized withdrawals from about 3,000 UK bank accounts since the trojan was first discovered on July 5th. According to Computer Weekly the amount that has been transfered to Eastern Europe is about £675,000! The trojan steal victims’ online banking ID and hijack their online banking sessions, undetected by traditional anti-virus software.

So far Zeus v3 seams to be focusing on UK bank accounts, but my guess is that it will soon also focus on other banks since it’s been pretty successful in stealing money so far. One scary thing is that the trojan will give you false bank web site showing a fake balance on your account so you wont notice any money is gone until it’s too late. M86, the company that discovered this trojan,  has published detailed information on the attack in an online whitepaper.

Even if you’re not in UK you could get into trouble if you get this trojan because according to RemoveVirus.org the Zeus botnet could even steal your Facebook or MySpace login details (and who knows how many other login details the trojan is searching for while it got full access to your computer).

Since this trojan is spread using regular (normally trusted web sites) and not porn/gamling web sites like many other trojans you need to stay alert when you visit web sites(even the once you regularly visit and trust). As a web site owner or blog owner you need to check your web site for strange code you haven’t put there to make sure you don’t help spread this trojan.

If you use WordPress as your blog platform you can check out WP Security Lock for valuable tips on how to protect your blog. You can of course also get a security consultation for your blog and I think it could be good to get some advice from someone experienced in this are since an infected blog will not only hurt your visitors, but it will also hurt your reputation.

Here are a few tips from the WP Security Lock blog on how to protect your computer from virus/trojans:

• Make sure your anti-virus software is up-to-date
• Set your firewalls to the highest level
• Never open email attachments from people you don’t know
• Never open a .exe attachments (this is an executable file)
• Contact your bank immediately if you’re affected