“Hold onto your hats. A new version of the Zeus trojan, called Zeus3, has wreaked havoc on thousands of bank accounts worldwide, stealing just over $1 million,” Nicholas Deleon reports for CrunchGear.
Advertisement: Save up to $100 on a new Mac and printer only at Apple Store Online.
“The best part? There’s pretty much no way to detect the trojan if it’s on your system,” Deleon reports. “Hooray for humanity, right?”
“The trojan first popped up last month, and has drained more than 3,000 bank accounts,” Deleon reports. “M86 Security, the first group to discover the trojan, says: We’ve never seen such a sophisticated and dangerous threat. Always check your balance and have a good idea of what it is. …The scariest part is that the trojan, after clear out your bank account, serves up a fake bank statement page. It looks like you have all of your money, but you actually have $50 left in your entire account.”
Deleon reports, “Oh, it only affects Windows systems. But you knew that already.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hey, good thing you “saved” upfront when you bought that shiteous Windows laptop instead of that MacBook Pro you really wanted, Lauren. Surely, the hacker thieves thank you for the extra cash, you computer shopping genius.
MacDailyNews Note: A separate report from Computerworld NZ states that “the botnet included a few hundred thousand PCs and even about 3,000 Apple Macs.” It does not state whether these zombie Macs were running Windows (although one might suspect that to be the case). Regardless, participation in the botnet does not mean that the Mac users’ bank accounts were drained; it means that the Macs helped the thieves drain the bank accounts. If you have to run Windows on your Mac, do not use it to connect to the Internet unless you have to and never use Windows for your online banking. As always: Do not authorize software installs from untrusted sources.
