Over 60 to be charged in Zeus Trojan cybercrime

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NEW YORK | Thu Sep 30, 2010 10:38am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prosecutors plan to unveil charges against more than 60 defendants allegedly involved in a global cybercrime scheme that used the Zeus Trojan and other Internet viruses to steal millions of dollars from U.S. bank accounts.

The charges will be announced later Thursday by federal and state law enforcement officials including U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in New York, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, and officials from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, according to press statements from prosecutors.

No further information was immediately available.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
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Comments (2)
RudyHaugeneder wrote:
Big deal — a criminally-created virus to suck up a few million.
It’s absolutely nothing compared to the real world of virus wars: Whoever or whatever created Stuxnet, one thing is clear: a serious Cyberwar has begun.
The new dogs of war have been unleashed and it is only a matter of time before Stuxnet will become the equivalent of the first rock a human threw as a weapon against somebody he/she didn’t like, and, thanks to the inventive minds of our species, evolves into a software machine gun and then the equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
This time there might not be a MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) concern to prevent cyberwar from raging totally out of control.
Serious Cyberwars have begun — cyberwars that will ultimately be organized and carried out by Artificial Intelligence.
It is time to become afraid, really afraid, since almost all modern business and industry could not only become crippled, but be reprogrammed to destroy us.

Sep 30, 2010 12:37pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
johannesg wrote:
The key distinction between Zeus and Stuxnet is ability to avoid self-damage. Zeus and other ‘classic’ theft-related attacks don’t come back on the attackers. Stuxnet (which was out for a long time in European countries prior to news of it hitting Iran, by the way) is different in that attacks of this class by their very nature can come back to harm the attackers – e.g. theoretically capable of taking out a power grid or other infrastructure nearby when the intended target was on the other side of the world 9 months earlier

Glad to see that the enforcement effort is underway, though. I’m really tired of attending security conferences in which the experts explain ruefully after detailing the takedown about how Interpol or the US DoJ wasn’t able to make the punishment stick.

Sep 30, 2010 6:33pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
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