Whoa! New trojan empties account of thousands of Brits!

**LouCipherr** · 11-Aug-2010

Watch out guys, something fishy is going on... and I just love how it's an "unnamed bank"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...-accounts.html

Cyber criminals have raided the accounts of thousands of British internet bank customers in one of the most sophisticated attacks of its kind.

The fraudsters used a malicious computer programme that hides on home computers to steal confidential passwords and account details from at least 3,000 people. The internet security experts M86, who uncovered the scam, estimate that at least £675,000 has been illegally transferred from the UK in the last month – and that the attacks are still continuing.

All the victims were customers with the same unnamed online bank, the company said. Last night online banking customers were urged to make sure their anti-virus software was up to date – and to check for any missing sums from their accounts. The attack has been traced to a ‘control and command’ centre in Eastern Europe. However, the nationality of the cybercriminals is unknown. The latest attack involved a Trojan called Zeus v3 which hides inside adverts on legitimate websites.

Once installed on a home computer, the programme waits until the user visits their online bank and then secretly records their account details and passwords – using the information to transfer between £1,000 and £5,000 to other bank accounts. The attacks began on July 5 and are still progressing, according to Ed Rowley, product manager at M86.

‘In the vast majority of cases, if people had kept their computer’s operating systems and software such as Internet Explorer up to date they would not have been attacked,’ he said.

That last paragraph/comment about "keeping your OS and software up to date" surprises me - especially since the British government refuses to upgrade from Internet Explorer 6 (scroll to the bottom of that link for the gov't response) - the most vunerable version of IE to date! WTF!?