Every once in awhile, the good guys have their day.
As eSecurity Planet reports, today’s news that the FBI working with multiple law enforcement agencies managed to break up a cybercrime organization responsible for using malware to steal more than $3 million from U.S. bank customers.
The masterminds of the cybercrime syndicate allegedly concealed the Zeus Trojan in what benign-looking email attachments that, once opened, allowed the malware to embed itself in the victims’ computers.
Once the malware had infiltrated users’ PCs, it was able to record keystrokes and banking websites visited, allowing the hackers to access their online accounts and make unauthorized transfers of “thousands of dollars” at a time to receiving accounts controlled by co-conspirators.
Thirty-seven members of an international cybercrime ring based in Eastern Europe were charged today with a variety of state and federal charges accusing them of using the Zeus Trojan to snare bank account numbers and passwords that were then used to pilfer more than $3 million from victims’ accounts.
The takedown, which is the culmination of a year-long investigation by the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s office in southern New York, the New York Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service, resulted in the arrests of 10 people in the U.S. this morning. Another 10 were previously arrested in England and another 17 are still being sought both in the U.S. and abroad, the FBI said in a statement released Thursday.