Instabill Merchant Account Experts Blog

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The ZeuS Trojan is not a new form of malware. In fact, it has been around for years. However, recent news indicates that an updated version has been released, and both businesses and individuals are feeling the affects. Whether you're an online shopper, e-commerce merchant, payment processor, or acquiring back, this virus is out to steal your cardholder information.

What Is the ZeuS Trojan?

The ZeuS Trojan is a banking virus. It steals data from infected computers and is malware most often used in financial fraud. It can steal submitted information sent through HTTP forms as well as redirect victims to phishing sites.

ZeuS Trojan Updates

According to Digital Transactions, the latest updates to the ZeuS Trojan "is not only harder to detect, but also more capable of stealing card numbers, PINs, and other sensitive information." It has the "ability to lurk undetected until after a consumer has logged into apparently normal Web sites."

Operation High Roller

Labeled as Operation High Roller, cyber criminals have stolen several million dollars from wealthy individuals, corporations, and businesses with at least several million dollars each in their bank accounts. First detected in January, attacks have been made on financial institutions of all sizes—from local credit unions and regional banks to large national and international banks—starting in Europe and moving over to the U.S. and Columbia.

According to The Daily Sheeple, cyber criminals have stolen more than $74 million dollars and counting. They injected ZeuS and SpyEye into the banks' servers and transferred relatively low amounts of money into mule accounts. Reports suggest the criminals could steal as much as $2.5 billion total.

Preventing High Rollers Attacks

Since Operation High Roller has been siphoning money from accounts for several months, it's hard to say how to prevent attacks. The FBI issued a warning in January that the ZeuS Trojan was targeting individual bank accounts and using phishing emails disguised as emails from the National Automation Clearing House Association (NACHA) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

If the Operation High Roller criminals are using phishing emails to gain access to banking information, our best advice is to be wary of emails coming from financial institutions.

• Don't follow links or enter personal information. Instead, enter the URL into the Web browser yourself.
• Examine the email message to determine if it's a phishing scam. Are words misspelled? Does it have bad grammar?
• Examine the links within the email message. Hover over the anchor text to see where the link will take you.

If you think you have received a phishing email, delete it immediately without clicking on any links. For more information on preventing credit card fraud, read our post The Fight Against Credit Card Fraud.