14 DAY TRIAL // The New Scotland Yard announces that a male and a female suspected of using the Zbot trojan to perform bank fraud were arrested in Manchester earlier this month. The two are the first individuals known to be arrested in Europe for distributing the notorious computer trojan.
The bust was coordinated by officers from the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), a specialized division of the Metropolitan Police Service, who were assisted by their colleagues from Greater Manchester. The suspects, whose names or nationality have not yet been unveiled, are both 20 years old and were arrested for offenses under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act and the 2006 Fraud Act.
The Zeus bot, or Zbot, is a computer trojan designed to steal bank account information. Most recent versions of this malware are also capable of initiating and hiding fraudulent transactions while the victim is logged in into their online banking account.
Little information is currently known about the trojan's original creators and maintainers, but customized versions of the malware are being sold on the black market to other cybercriminals. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that there are multiple gangs distributing and using this malware to perform bank fraud, at any given time.
"The ZeuS Trojan is a piece of malware used increasingly by criminals to obtain huge quantities of sensitive information from thousands of compromised computers around the world. The arrests represent a considerable breakthrough in our increasing efforts to combat online criminality," Detective Inspector Colin Wetherill of the PCeU commented.
Zbot's methods of propagation have varied during the years. However, infected emails seem to be the preferred method of distribution. We have recently reported on several Zbot spam campaigns that employ social engineering techniques to trick users into opening malicious attachments.
"It's worth bearing in mind, of course, that although the arrests have been in the UK, the Zbot family of malware is a problem that has been hitting computer users around the world - it is truly a global threat," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, noted. "If the police have made a positive step in unravelling the gang behind Zbot then that will be very good news for everyone interested in making the internet a safer place," he added.