Slashdot Mirror
Two Arrested For Zbot Trojan
An anonymous reader writes "Officers from the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime Unit have made Europe's first arrests in the battle against the ZeuS or Zbot Trojan which threatened to compromise thousands of computers. Officers arrested a man and woman, both aged 20 years, in Manchester for offenses under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act and the 2006 Fraud Act. Both suspects were interviewed by PCeU detectives and have been bailed for further in-depth inquiries to be completed. The arrests in connection with the malware represent some of the first in the world, and the first in Europe to combat the distribution and control of ZeuS."
But it is good to see more women programmers coming into the field.
With the cops on the hunt, it sounds like people writing malicious code will have to be spending a lot more time indoors.
Oh, wait...
My webcomic
But it is good to see more women programmers coming into the field.
The downside is Trojan writers now can breed.
Odd, I was under the impression they used the trojans to stop from accidentally breeding.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
The internet, it's this shared thing right? So as long as you don't care about using it then yeah it's not your problem.
Yes. The theft of tons of personal information worth a ton of money is something that only affects Windows users.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
it would be interesting to find out if they are merely patsies for a larger effort, or are genuinely isolated and inspired script kiddies
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, North West England - the UK
Watch those corners
The "who cares about windows users" keeps getting stronger.
What else do the evil voices tell you to do?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Idiots are everywhere. You think people won't write malware or trojans if macos or linux suddenly jumped to a majority market share? People write the shit for windows because its what everyone uses. Why would I bother with 1.2% of the linux users when theres 92% of windows users available? Nothing is idiot proof, not even linux.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I would be excited to know how they got caught. There might be an enjoyable story there.
I would have imagined that if these two were smart then they would have completely covered/obfuscated their tracks every step of the way. From propagating the first copy of the trojan to making sure any profits/information was sent through an elaborate network of communication-encrypted proxies before arriving on a remote server from which they could connect to using a similar but different network of communication-encrypted proxies and download/view the information.
I'd really love to know if they were just stupid, or if someone else was just way smarter. For the stories sake, I hope its the latter.
I agree, I do get a similar feeling. And although default settings are better on an OS like Linux, I can't help but think that those same users would manage to get infected on Linux too - if everyone started to switch.
The only thing I know for certain is that I have more control over a Linux machine and as such have found them easier to diagnose and fix. Oh, and tonnes easier to reliably lock down.
The Guardian would suggest that the met Police e-crime unit were involved in the take down http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/18/zeus-zbot-trojan-virus and the e-crime unit http://www.kable.co.uk/government-ecrime-review-home-office-14jul09 is part of GCHQ http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/25/cyberspace-war-computer-hacking-fraud. So may well be more to this than meets the eye.
It's because the UK's e-crime unit is part of the Metropolitan Police. I guess it doesn't make sense for each police authority to have it's own e-crime unit.
PCeU - Police Central e-crime Unit