More arrests made in Zeus botnot crimes

MORE THAN EIGHTY alleged money mules have been arrested as US authorities swooped on foreign students who are accused of opening hooky bank accounts to transfer stolen funds out of the country.

The students were allegedly caught up in the investigation of East European hackers because they could be used to launder the cash through the accounts. So far US prosecutors claim that $3 million has been netted by the gang.

Back in August Eastern European gangsters also used the Zeus botnet to steal £675,000 from a UK financial institution. Then the INQUIRER reported a couple of days ago that the botnet was used to zombify and steal personal information from compromised PCs. This led to 19 arrests at the time, with rozzers indicating that the sum total stolen would be likely to increase as the investigation went on.

According to the Associated Press, 55 people have already been charged and a further 37 people have been indicted for a raft of fraud and money laundering charges.

"The mouse and the keyboard can be far more effective than the gun and the mask," said US Attorney Preet Bharara at a press conference in Manhattan.

Imperva senior security strategist Noa Bar-Yosef claimed she knows how the e-crims set up their nefarious Zeus scams, possibly relying on bot-farmers to facilitate their larceny.

"These criminals operated Zeus in one of two ways: either the bots used were under their own control, or, and more likely the case, they rented a bot from a bot 'farmer'. The bot farmer grows and manages the bot[net], and the criminals then rented and used it."

Noa reckoned there is a very strict hierarchy of roles at play in these cyber-crimes, which is why the gangs have been so ruthlessly efficient. Well, until they get arrested, that is.

The researcher looks for different ways to infect machines, the botnet farmer operates the bots, the botnet dealer rents the bots, and the actual 'consumer' monetizes the virtual goods received by the bots.

This time around though, the botnet users actively engaged with the Trojan because the criminals added exploitable code into the victim's browsers. µ