Fergie's Tech Blog

Nasty Banking Trojan Makes Mules of Victims

Robert McMillan writes on PC World:

A sophisticated Trojan horse program designed to empty bank accounts has a new trick up its sleeve: It lies to investigators about where the money is going.

First uncovered by Finjan Software last week, the URLzone Trojan is already known to be very advanced. It rewrites bank pages so that the victims don't know that their accounts have been emptied, and it also has a sophisticated command-and-control interface that lets the bad guys pre-set what percentage of the account balance they want to clear out.

But Finjan isn't the only company looking into URLzone. RSA Security researchers say the software uses several techniques to spot machines that are run by investigators and law enforcement. Researchers typically create their own programs that are designed to mimic the behavior of real Trojans. When URLzone identifies one of these, it sends it bogus information, according to Aviv Raff, RSA's FraudAction research lab manager.

Security experts have long published research into the inner workings of malicious computer programs such as URLzone, Raff said. "Now the other side knows that they are being watched and they're acting," he said.

posted by Fergie @ 10/05/2009 07:29:00 PM