Microsoft's anti-Zeus tool cleans quarter-million PCs
Microsoft said its free malware cleaning tool had scrubbed the money-stealing Zeus bot from nearly 275,000 Windows computers in under a week.
Zeus, also called Zbot, is a crimeware kit that lets criminals create customized malware that they can use to infect PCs. Hackers deploy Zeus to steal usernames, passwords and other information necessary to log in to online bank accounts. So-called "money mules" then withdraw money from the compromised accounts and wire the funds to the gang's organizers.
Friday, Fortinet reported that one Zeus gang had targeted Charles Schwab investment accounts, and was injecting a fake form into a legitimate session at the firm's site to collect personal information they could later use to confirm their illegal transactions. Last Tuesday, Microsoft added Zeus/Zbot detection to its Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), a free malware-removal program that the company updates each month and distributes alongside its Patch Tuesday security fixes. MSRT does not prevent attack code from getting on a Windows machines. Instead, it detects infected machines and then deletes the malware.
