Brazilian Trojans Start Targeting European Banks

Security researchers from Kaspersky warn that banking trojans of Brazilian origin have started targeting banks from Spain, Portugal and other countries.

European financial institutions have traditionally been targeted by widespread trojans like ZeuS or SpyEye, while Brazilian trojans from the Banker family have pretty much kept local.

According to Kasperky Lab's Fabio Assolini that's now changing, with recent configurations defining Portuguese, Spanish and even Cape Verde targets.

"Brazilian cybercriminals have always been very active in the creation and dissemination of banking Trojans among their compatriots. But now they are redirecting their attacks beyond the borders of Brazil to target banks in Europe.

"In recent months we have seen several Trojans developed in Brazil attempting to attack financial institutions in Europe, especially in Spain and Portugal," the Kaspersky researcher warns.

Banking trojans are amongst the biggest threats users face online because they are directly tied to financial fraud. Bank accounts, credit card details, personal information, PayPal credentials, are all fair game for the people behind this sort of malware.

Users should protect themselves by performing online banking and shopping from dedicated browser installations, preferably of products not commonly attacked, like Opera or Safari.

Ideally, this sort of sensitive operations should be performed from a dedicated computer or operating system that is not used for anything else. This can easily be done by using a virtual machine or by booting from a live CD.

Linux live CDs are easy to use and write nothing to the hard drives. All data is read from the optical media and is saved in RAM for the duration of the session. These CDs usually come with Firefox and other common programs pre-installed.

To prevent infection in the first place users should keep their software up to date and run an antivirus program capable of scanning web traffic at all times.