Publications
Partners
Cape Town - South Africans conducting online transactions face a number of specific malware threats that are designed to compromise personal and financial information.
According to security firm Trend Micro, just three malware applications make up the bulk of attacks on the SA financial system.
They are: SWISYN, which makes up 37% of detections, followed by DORKBOT (27%) and ZEUS/ZBOT (23%).
SWISYN is able to steal keystrokes and passwords and is also able to use an infected computer as part of a botnet to launch denial-of-service attacks on targeted servers.
Authors of the malware are able to configure it spread via USB flash drives.
DORKBOT can be used to steal login credentials and cyber crooks are also able to instruct the malware to download ransonware.
This category of malware was popular in Eastern Europe from about 2005 - 2006 and has lately spread to English speaking countries like the US and UK.
Criminals use ZEUS/ZBOT to steal data and monitor the web browser, enabling them to spy on online banking transactions.
Beyond avoiding downloading email attachments and clicking on suspicious links, computer users should carefully scan USB drives and disable the auto-run feature, typically enabled by default.
- Follow Duncan on Twitter
