From ZeuS to Zitmo: Trends in Banking Malware

Abstract

In the crimeware world, financial botnets are a global threat to banking organizations. Such malware purposely performs financial fraud and steals critical information from clients' computers. A common example of banking malware is the ZeuS botnet. Recently, variants of this malware have targeted mobile platforms, as The-ZeuS-in-the-Mobile or Zitmo. With the rise in mobile systems, platform security is becoming a major concern across the mobile world, with rising incidence of compromising Android devices. In similar vein, there have been mobile botnet attacks on iPhones, Blackberry and Symbian devices. In this setting, we report on trends and developments of ZeuS and its variants.