Russians to prosecute trojan writers

INSPECTOR Knackerov of the Russian Yard is preparing to prosecute the hackers who penned the 'Pinch' Trojan.

Nikolay Patrushev, who heads Russia's Federal Security Services, confirmed that Pinch's authors had been identified and would be taken to court.

Insecurity outfit Kaspersky labs said in its bog that the arrest of the Pinch writers, whom it calls Ermishkin and Farkhutdinov, will be as significant as the time German Sven Jaschan was done for creating the NetSky and Sasser worms.

Pinch has created huge financial losses for thousands of companies over the last few years, the bog said.

The software was easy to use and could be customised. Pinch's sellers would even offer support.

The software is still seen on the world wide wibble in one of its 4,000 variants.

It nicks e-mail account passwords and password information which might be stored in a users browser. It also snaps screenshots.

All the data is then encrypted and sent to the hacker. µ