Tag Archives: spyeye

Software Pirate Cracks Cybercriminal Wares

October 17, 2011
25 Comments

Make enough contacts in the Internet security community and you will probably learn that many of the folks involved in defending computers and networks against criminals got started in security by engaging in online illegal activity of one sort or another. These personal shifts are sometimes motivated by ethical and personal safety reasons, but just as often grey- and black hat hackers gravitate toward the defensive side simply because it is more intellectually challenging.

Hybrid Hydras and Green Stealing Machines

August 24, 2011
8 Comments

Hybrids seem to be all the rage in the automobile industry, so it’s unsurprising that hybrid threats are the new thing in another industry that reliably ships updated product lines: The computer crime world. The public release of the source code for the ZeuS Trojan earlier this year is spawning novel attack tools. And just as hybrid cars hold the promise of greater fuel efficiency, these nascent threats show the potential of the ZeuS source code leak for morphing ordinary, run-of-the-mill malware into far more efficient data-stealing machines.

‘Weyland-Yutani’ Crime Kit Targets Macs for Bots

May 2, 2011
51 Comments

A new crimeware kit for sale on the criminal underground makes it a simple point-and-click exercise to develop malicious software designed to turn Mac OSX computers into bots. According to the vendor of this kit, it is somewhat interchangeable with existing crimeware kits made to attack Windows-based PCs.

SpyEye Targets Opera, Google Chrome Users

April 26, 2011
73 Comments

The latest version of the SpyEye trojan includes new capability specifically designed to steal sensitive data from Windows users surfing the Internet with the Google Chrome and Opera Web browsers.

The author of the SpyEye trojan formerly sold the crimeware kit on a number of online cybercrime forums, but has recently limited his showroom displays to a handful of highly vetted underground communities. KrebsOnSecurity.com recently chatted with a member of one of these communities who has purchased a new version of SpyEye. Screenshots from the package show that the latest rendition includes new “form grabbing” capabilities targeting Chrome and Opera users.

Revisiting the SpyEye/ZeuS Merger

February 3, 2011
28 Comments

In October 2010, I discovered that the authors of the SpyEye and ZeuS banking Trojans — once competitors in the market for botnet creation and management kits — were killing further development of ZeuS and planning to fuse the two malware families into one supertrojan. Initially, I heard some skepticism from folks in the security community about this. But three months later, security experts are now starting to catch glimpses of this new hybrid Trojan in the wild, as the author(s) begins shipping a series of beta releases that include updated features on a nearly-daily basis.

Keeping an Eye on the SpyEye Trojan

November 8, 2010
3 Comments

Last month, I published evidence suggesting that future development of the ZeuS banking Trojan was being merged with that of the up-and-coming SpyEye Trojan. Since then, a flood of new research and resources has been published about SpyEye, including a new site that helps network owners track the location of SpyEye control networks worldwide.

SpyEye v. ZeuS Rivalry Ends in Quiet Merger

October 24, 2010
39 Comments

Chatter in the hacker underground suggests that certain elements within that community have conspired to end development of the infamous ZeuS banking Trojan, and to merge its code base with that of the up-and-coming SpyEye Trojan. This Web Fraud 2.0. acquisition appears to be a bid to build a more powerful e-banking threat whose sale is restricted to a more exclusive group of crooks.