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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."

7 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Re:2 Down... by Tynin · · Score: 5, Funny

    But it is good to see more women programmers coming into the field.

  2. Great news by T+Murphy · · Score: 4, Funny

    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...

  3. Re:2 Down... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But it is good to see more women programmers coming into the field.

    The downside is Trojan writers now can breed.

  4. Re:2 Down... by hcmtnbiker · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  5. Re:Not mentioned in the article... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:2 Down... by socceroos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Windows only / not windows only by socceroos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.