“The details of about 500,000 online bank accounts and credit and debit cards have been stolen by a virus described as ‘one of the most advanced pieces of crimeware ever created,’” Maggie Shiels reports for BBC News.
“The Sinowal trojan has been tracked by RSA, which helps to secure networks in Fortune 500 companies,” Shiels reports.
Shiels reports, “RSA said the trojan virus has infected computers all over the planet. ‘The effect has been really global with over 2000 domains compromised,’ said Sean Brady of RSA’s security division.”
“The RSA’s Fraud Action Research Lab said it first detected the Windows Sinowal trojan in Feb 2006,” Shiels reports. “Since then, Mr Brady said, more than 270,000 banking accounts and 240,000 credit and debit cards have been compromised from financial institutions in countries including the US, UK, Australia and Poland.”
“Users can get infected without knowing if they visit a website that has been booby-trapped with the Sinowal malicious code,” Shiels reports. “Sophos researchers reported in 2008 it was finding more than 6,000 newly infected web pages every day, or about one every 14 seconds.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Blah, blah, blah, same old, same old. The whole thing reads like a Mac commercial, as usual. Unfortunately, this article also uses a Mac as an illustration with “DANGER” tape over its screen which might lead some BBC readers to be confused. Apple Macs are unaffected – unless, of course, they are Intel-based Macs (unlike the one pictured) that are slumming it with Windows, in which case, all bets are off. Your Mac’s Windows partition can become as infected as any old POS Dell. Regardless, in the interest of fairness and accuracy, BBC News should immediately remove this illustration and replace it with an image of a PC that is prone to this trojan because it ships with Microsoft’s insecure and dangerous Windows operating system.
BBC News Feedback (online form) is here. Reference the BBC’s article URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7701227.stm
[UPDATE: 11:11pm EDT: The BBC has changed their photo illustration to show a beige box PC monitor and keyboard with WIndows on-screen.]
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