Large Zeus Botnet Used For Financial Fraud

An anonymous reader writes "A large Zeus version 2 botnet is being used to conduct financial fraud in the UK and is operated from Eastern Europe. The botnet appears to be controlling more than 100,000 infected computers. The criminals have been harvesting all manner of potentially lucrative and revenue-producing credentials — including online account IDs plus login information to banks, credit and debit card numbers, account types plus balances, bank statements, browser cookies, client side certificates, login information for email accounts and social networks, and even FTP passwords."

Comments

I predicted this

[1s44c]

Botnet herders have access to a very large number of computers, it was only a matter of time until they realized that the data on these computers is worth far more than the few pence they are making from Viagra spam and blackmailing gambling sites with DDOS attacks.

Re:Pardon me, I have to ask...

[jbeach]

It seems clear to my personal experience, and friends of mine who are in computer security, that Os X and Linux are orders of magnitude more secure than Windows.

While I'm sure OS X and Linux can be exploited, I think we'd all be far safer if they were adopted to anywhere near the ubiquity of windows. And who knows? That may be soon, if Google apps and other productivity software is available for free or cheap as compared to Windows, and its current lock on business drone software.