by Rob Douglas

Brian Krebs’ Security Fix column over at The Washington Post is reporting in a piece titled Virtual Heist Nets 500,000+ Bank, Credit Accounts:

“A single cyber crime group has stolen more than a half million bank, credit and debit card accounts over the past two-and-a-half years using one of the most advanced strains of computer spyware in existence, according to research to be published today. The discovery is among the largest stolen data caches ever recovered.”

The spyware is called the “Sinowal” Trojan and according to Krebs and researchers at RSA:

“The Trojan lies in wait until the victim visits one of more than 2,700 bank and e-commerce sites hard-coded into the malware, at which point it injects new Web pages or information fields into the victim’s Web browser. For example, Sinowal can falsely prompt an unsuspecting victim for personal information, such as a Social Security number or password when he or she visits one of the targeted financial institution Web sites. Any stolen data is regularly uploaded to Web servers controlled by the Trojan’s authors.”

While it’s not known who is responsible, Krebs reports that “Russian malware gangs” may be involved.

I must say I agree completely with Krebs when, in an additional post to his own blog responding to a question by a reader, he writes:

“Something else I think is interesting about this case is it really highlights the imbalance of law enforcement/investigations into digital crime vs. main street crimes. If bank robbers made off with half a million dollars — to say nothing of the balance from a half million account numbers! — that would be big news, as most real-life bank heists net only a few thousand dollars on average.”

Krebs is correct.  It is mind-boggling that these types of incidents fly below the radar of most news operations and therefore the American people are in the dark about the rise of cybercrime.  Hopefully, in the coming months and years the main stream media will do a better job of spreading the word.

Trojan Horse