Network of computers (Yours may be one of them!) infected by malicious programs such as, key-loggers are on the rise. Cyber criminals are in control of this international activity and with the help of Botnets they can steal confidential information from infected computers to commit financial crimes. Last week, FBI seized five servers that participated in this activity which are known to have infected as many as two million computers with the powerful virus Coreflood. These servers are part of a larger international setup which has been active for more than a year. Coreflood is actually a key-logging program that allows criminals hijack personal information and steal funds. Coreflood’s main spreading mechanism is through email attachments while anti-virus vendors are working hard to update their signature files in order to have Coreflood detected and removed from users’ computers. So, make sure that you keep your anti-virus up to date!
The Coreflood Virus which targets Windows-based operating systems is difficult to trace hence, Windows users are advised to check their online banking transaction history and check for unknown transactions which should be reported immediately to the relevant financial institution or bank. From the technical perspective we keep advising this community to make sure to have Microsoft’s latest security updates installed and if possible, keep Windows Update set to Install updates automatically, and make sure to have an updated anti-virus program running all times and an active firewall.
For more information about FBI’s successfully seizure go here.