Collaboration Fuels Rapid Growth of Citadel Trojan
Late last month I wrote about Citadel, an “open source” version of the ZeuS Trojan whose defining feature is a social networking component where users can report and fix programming bugs, suggest and vote on new features in upcoming versions, and generally guide development of the botnet malware. Since then, I’ve been given a peek inside that social networking space, and it suggests that Citadel’s collaborative approach is fueling rapid growth of this new malware strain.
A customer who bought a license to the Citadel Trojan extended an invitation to drop in on that community of hackers. Those who have purchased the software can interact with the developers and other buyers via comments submitted to the Citadel Store, a front-end interface that is made available after users are validated through a two-step authentication process.
