“Researchers at security firm Finjan have discovered details of a new type of banking Trojan horse that doesn’t just steal your bank log in credentials but actually steals money from your account while you are logged in and displays a fake balance,” Elinor Mills reports for CNET.
“The bank Trojan, dubbed URLZone, has features designed to thwart fraud detection systems which are triggered by unusual transactions, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at Finjan, said in an interview Tuesday. For instance, the software is programmed to calculate on-the-fly how much money to steal from an account based on how much money is available,” Mills reports.
“It exploits a hole in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, IE7, IE8, and Opera, and it is different from previously reported banking Trojans, said Ben-Itzhak,” Mills reports. “The Trojan runs an executable only on Windows systems, he said. The executable can come via a number of avenues, including malicious JavaScript or an Adobe PDF, he added.”
Mills reports, “About 90,000 computers visited the sites housing the malware and 6,400 of them were infected, a 7.5 percent success rate, he said. Of those whose computers installed the Trojan, a few hundred had money stolen from their bank accounts, he said. During the span of 22 days in mid-August, the criminals behind the Trojan stole the euro equivalent of nearly $438,000.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good thing you “saved” $127.50 upfront on that POS Windows PC versus that Apple Mac you really wanted, right, dumbass?
Hey MDN… how about a Bank of Mac that’s utterly secure but only for Mac people? That would get more folks onto Macs and give you more money to promote the word!
Microsoft’s New Ad Campaign:
“Want your money stolen? There’s a trojan for that.”
@ Cubert
ROFLMAO!!!! Priceless!!!
So is this proof that malware writers don’t just focus on Windows because they make a better target, that the reason there isn’t Mac malware isn’t just because there are fewer Macs? After all, Mac users tend to have more money to steal. You’d think there would definitely be a Mac version of this, if it were possible.
——RM
Quick get this story to that little Asian girl so she can put it in her presentation. It gives “Final Countdown” a new meaning.
just my $0.02
@MDN, I think you’ve hit on the next Mac vs PC Commercial. Justin saying “dumass” would be priceless!
“200,000 pieces of malware. Only on Winblows.”
@Ray,
Have you noticed that Micro$ucks changed the music for that commercial recently? It’s not the same as when they first started airing it.
To be fair, saving that hypothetical $127.50, cost the average visitor to the malware sites only about $5, cause that’s what I get when divide 90,000 visitors into $438,000 lost.
I have to say that sometimes your snarky comments can REALLY make me laugh, and this is one of them
@Anonymous,
The article said 7.5% of the 90,000, or 6,400, were infected. $438,000 divided by 6,400 is an average of $68.44/ea. So, clearly, you’d still be money ahead if you “saved” $127.50 upfront on a POS Windows PC. However, that figure doesn’t take into account the frustration factor, nor does it account for any value on your time – another thing typically left out of the Mac/PC debate.
Personally, I value my time. I’d rather spend it editing videos and photos, creating things, or enjoying my family than downloading a bunch of different anti-malware, anti-spyware, and registry cleaning tools or doing clean installs of Windows and reinstalling apps to get rid of the malware.
But, then I’m preaching to the choir.
@ Cubert,
Absolute classic!
The new commercial for Win7 with the little Asian girl uses the “A-Team” theme music. I pity the fool!
Holy fscking shit! Best comments ever! So funny and true. Culbert that’s too good. I am gonna to use that line on retards that want to bash Macs just because they are jealous and too poor to afford a Mac. Well maybe they could afford one if they could get out and make some more money instead of being tied up with fresh windoz installs to chase the Trojans and spyware “ton the back” (credit baghad bob)
Those that were successfully hit were set up for online bill pay.
I don’t use online bill pay.
The summary said ” a few hundred had money stolen from their bank accounts”, so $438,000 divided by, say, 350, is $1251.
That’s enough to get an iMac right there.
LOL!
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Cubert! That was excellent!
I was having diner with a group of people the other day. The guy across from me, hearing I know a little about Macs, asked me if he should get one. Then he told me why he was thinking of switching.
It turns out he had over $20,000 taken from his bank account due to some form of Windows malware. $20K!
After I picked up my jaw I proceeded to tell him that Macs don’t have such problems. That I’ve never heard of a Mac getting infected with virus or malware. And that I have NEVER had any kind hardware or software firewall turned on for the last 13 years. I mentioned that he should visit the local Apple store and learn more for him self.
The guy next to him went livid, absolutely livid. He went on a rant about how much more expensive Macs are and that no one should ever spend more than $400 for a computer, etc. etc. Yawn.
Then I mentioned that the original guy already ‘spent’ over $20K for the privilege of using Windows and anything less than that he would spend on a Mac would be a ‘savings’ to him. I didn’t hear a peep from the other guy the rest of the meal.
Glad that Macs aren’t as vulnerable as PCs, but wish that Apple would get serious about trojans.
Problem one is that an OS should recognise the software that it is running, and therefore know when it is running something is does not recognise.
Problem two is that all software runs with the full permissions of the logged-in user. This is a mistake.
Good security follows the three A’s:
– Authentication – what are you?
– Authorization – what are you allowed to do?
– Audit – what did you do?
The Apple Tax: A dollar a day
The Apple Pax: Priceless.
Some things are priceless. For everything else, there’s Windows.
(A dolor a day.)
Anyone notice how long the “related articles” list is ? LMAO
lol want to know something really funny only reason ppl act Pc and not mac is cause who even has a mac do u know of any big business that are ran form a mac lol im sure that they could not even make a mac with out a pc and on top of that what can mac’s even do?? the internet is ran off pc not macs hell half the shit dont even work on a mac have fun trying to find the mac download for everything and iv never had any prob with my pc i build and work on them and all this mac vs pc crap is funny to me mac is over priced and is a POS no matter if its a mac or pc u out your info on an un safe website it will get tooken stop bein a dumbass prob solved.