It’s a dog eat dog world out there, or should we say, horse eat horse, with security experts reporting that one particular Trojan program seems to have waged all-out war on its bigger competitor, wiping it off any machine it finds it on.
This may sound like white-knight type behavior, but unfortunately for the end victim, the results are the same.
Security researchers say that Russian made Spy Eye includes an in-built command to “Kill Zeus,” which is another password pilfering Russian Trojan, which steals usernames and passwords in order to facilitate online bank robbery. Talk about “From Russia with Love.”
Both Zeus and Spy Eye use their evil coding to turn victims’ computers into slaves of giant botnets, which in turn help their masters acquire more passwords and usernames. Such schemes have already cost around $100 million in losses according to FBI estimates from October 2009, so it’s a lucrative enough business to turf fight over.
Security experts reckon that Spy Eye is probably the most aggressive little backstabbing upstart of its Trojan kind though, not only wiping Zeus clean off of victims’ machines, but also stealing all the data the rival Trojan picked up while it was there. And as if that wasn’t enough, Spy Eye also keeps its all seeing eyes open as Zeus data gets pinged back to its command-and-control server.
Spy Eye is also using plain old fashioned economics to try and pull the rug out from under its rival, undercutting Zeus’ price by $2000. A steal at just $500 on the black market.
Gods.
