World's nastiest Trojan tricks Antivirus software
submitted by markodonoghue on 18 September 2009
One of the world's nastiest Trojans is stealing passwords, evading detection by Antivirus programs according to a study of 10,000 machines.
The Trojan in question, is called Zeus, a very stealthy piece of malware that sits on a PC and waits for users to log in to bank websites. It gets detected just 23% of the time by Antivirus programs according to the study by security firm Trusteer. Even Antivirus programs with up-to-date malware signatures, failed to identify the worrying infection a majority of the time.
This is a very serous matter, due to the fact that people rely on Antivirus programs to keep them safe.
Zeus, which also goes by the name Zbot and PRG, avoids detection by using sophisticated techniques such as root-kit technology.
A recent report estimated that Zeus is the No. 1 trojan, with 3.6 million infections in the US alone, or about 1 per cent of the installed base of PCs. After sneaking onto a PC, it sits quietly in the background until a user logs on to a financial website. It then sends the login details to a remote server, sometimes by use of instant messaging programs.
About 31% of Zeus-infected machines don't run Antivirus at all and 14% run Antivirus that's out of date. The remaining 55% had Antivirus programs that were up to date.
Submitted by:
Mark O'Donoghue
Associated Links:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/18/zeus_evades_detection/
RSS Feed