Described as the most advanced piece of Crimeware the Sinowal Trojan has stolen about 500,000 online bank accounts all over the world.
RSA which helps to secure networks in Fortune 500 companies tracked the Trojan which has compromised over 2000 domains.
Sean Brady of RSA’s security division said “This is a serious incident on a very noticeable scale and we have seen an increase in the number of trojans and their variants, particularly in the States and Canada”
The Sinowal Trojan was detected first in Feb 2006 and since then it has compromised 240,000 credit and debit cards and 270,000 banking accounts. However RSA also reported that Sinowal has not affected any Russian accounts.
Sinowal has also been decribed as one of the most serious threats to people using internet as it works behind scenes and is driven by the most common drive-by downloads method.
Also Sinowal has been constantly updated over the years which is the reason it has been still working for so long. The Trojan is also known as Torpig and Mebroot.
It seems that the group which runs the Trojan have invested a lot of time and infrastructure in it as it takes a lot of costs a lot to maintain and to store the information it is gathering. But again the kind of returns they have received is quite large.
Sinowal infects victims’ computers without leaving any trace.
As per RSA the Attacks are on the increase everyday. But its very easy to protect your Data using security softwares.
First thing that you need to do is ‘think before you link’.
Be aware of what you click on anything in a high traffic site like social networks.
Also do not provide any personal information in mails to your bank.
Also do not Click on Pop Up’s as they are very dangerous in terms of drive-by downloads method.
Posted under Network and Security
This post was written by Brad on November 1, 2008
