14 DAY TRIAL // Three men were arrested in UK under suspicion of participating in a cyber fraud operation that involved using a custom SpyEye trojan to compromise online banking accounts.
SpyEye is a relatively popular crimeware toolkit that has been slowly eating away at the market share of the more notorious ZeuS.
Following a series of ZeuS-related arrests in UK, US, Ukraine and other countries last year, cyber fraudsters have began looking for alternatives.
Gangs with more resources opted for designing their own trojans from scratch, while others have switched to SpyEye and other ZeuS competitors.
The retirement of the ZeuS author, Slavik, and his donation of the trojan's code base to the SpyEye creator, has further accentuated the latter's popularity.
It's therefore no wonder that law enforcement agencies have turned their attention to suspected SpyEye fraudsters, such as the three men arrested in UK.
The Register reports that two of the men, Pavel Cyganoc, 26, a Lithuanian national living in Birmingham, and Aldis Krummins, 45, a Latvian residing in Goole, Humberside, were charged with computer hacking.
Meanwhile, the third unnamed suspect was released on bail. Charges might be filed against him at a later date depending on how the investigation progresses.
It's not immediately clear what role these men played in the fraud operation or if they are part of a larger gang. Police declined to comment because a court-imposed reporting restriction.
The investigation that led to the arrests began in January and was carried out by the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), a relatively new squad of officers from the Metropolitan Police Service, who specialize in cyber crimes.
Last September, the PCeU arrested twenty indviduals, fifteen men and five women, under suspicion of being part of an international ZeuS cyber fraud gang coordinated from Ukraine. Eleven of them were officially charged.