Rossano Ferraris says that SpyEye is now very well known within all security communities and security blogs of the world, and the the latest version malware includes some very powerful capabilities, specifically designed to steal sensitive data from Windows users conducting monetary transactions over the internet.
The trojan tool, he says, is sold on the underground market and in cybercrime forums to be used by fellow cybercriminals, and has been designed to defeat the security defences of online banks, effectively making them useless.
“If people are infected by this trojan then their credentials and sensitive data such as: identities, credit card numbers and similar information, are stolen and sent to the criminals waiting to collect this data”, he says in his latest security posting, adding that the number of SpyEye kits in use around the world is unknown, largely because the owners of the malware remain silent, but active on the internet.
One breakthrough that Ferarris and his team at Computer Associates made, however, was when they found a hidden and malicious website that gave them access to a SpyEye control panel giving them a lot of sensitive information.
“Needless to say, this site was password protected and not accessible by everybody, but only by those criminals who have built up the database full of stolen data”, he says in his latest security posting, adding that the control panel shows a friendly interface to query a hidden database containing the stolen information.
The credit card grabber button, he notes, is highly visible, with precise and detailed filters which can be provided by the malicious user to focus on particular choices, such as: “with CVV only.”
Because of the severity of SpyEye, Ferraris recommends that users regularly update their IT security, as well as their operating system and patches, and ensure that their software is also patched on a regular basis.
Users, he says, should not install software they do not need – or add-ons which ask you to install any further software.
You should, he adds, only maintain what is useful to you on your computer, with the rest being rejected and/or removed.