Zeus crimeware kit source code discovered online

[thewayne]

This software sold for $5,000 to $10,000 (one researcher speculated that the source could have sold for as much as $100,000) and can now be found for free if you know where to look. Security researchers have downloaded the code, compiled it, and verified that it is authentic and that it works. It is unclear who released the code.

The bad thing about this is that with the code freely available there will soon be a whole new wave of criminals trying to infect your computer and trying to steal your banking and other information.

The good thing about this is that more computer security researchers and operating system developers will have access to it, so perhaps we'll get some OS security improvements in the not too distant future.

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/ZeuS-source-code-freely-available-on-the-net-1241417.html

https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/zeus-source-code-leaked-051011

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/05/11/1326257/Zeus-Crimeware-Kit-Source-Code-Leaked

Comments

[silveradept]

So, it's both sides of the truism at once - technology advancing, and the technology to fool that technology advancing as well.

Hopefully, they'll find a way of making it so that the Zeus stuff won't work any more, and we'll move on, update, and worry about the next crimeware kit.

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

I expect (1) a flood of competent, semi-competent, and incompetent wannabes trying to infect every computer in the world, using (2) source code that is basically known to the security community now. In other words, a really fast learning curve that should make this particular flavor of crimeware obsolete fairly quickly.

Of course in the mean time there is hell to pay, and there's always another crook writing another set of tools.