The power of Zeus is fading but his children are spreading. This isn’t mythology; it’s hacking in cyber space with real consequences for financial institutions around the world.
According to the RSA Monthly Online Fraud Report, the global network of hackers and cyber thieves apparently are moving beyond the Zeus malware and its original development team. New names for new threats already are emerging, RSA said.
“Citadel, Ice IX, Odin, and any other code based on the old king’s exposed source code will each have their own name,” the Internet security firm said in its just-released March report. “It’s only a matter of time before botmasters will move away from Zeus to Trojans for which the development of upgrades and new features continue to thrive. We will likely see less of Zeus on the monthly charts – although its offspring will live on.”
This month’s monthly charts show that nationwide brands and regional banks both saw an 8% increase in phishing attacks in February while credit unions saw a 16% decline, RSA said.
Globally, February saw a 30% drop in phishing attacks, with only 21,030 phishing attacks detected. “After five consecutive months of being heavily targeted, the U.K. finally got replaced by the U.S. as the country enduring the most phishing volume,” said the report from the RSA Anti-Fraud Command Center.
