Mass global steal by cybercrims facilitated by botnet

Gordon Peters
Wednesday, 04 August 2010 02:07

IT Industry - Market

A global network of 55,000 computers have been infected by the Mumba botnet, with more than 60GB of personal data stolen from users including credentials from social networking web sites, bank account details, credit card numbers and emails.

In a report on global malware activity, AVG says that the United States had the highest share of PCs infected by the Mumba botnet at 33 percent, followed by Germany with 17 percent, Spain seven percent, the United Kingdom six percent, and Mexico and Canada both with five percent.

AVG reports that the Mumba botnet was created by one of the most “sophisticated groups of cybercriminals on the Internet known as the Avalanche Group” who it says perfected a mass-production system for deploying phishing sites and data-stealing malware.

Mumba uses the latest version of Zeus, which AVG says is currently one of the most common malwares.

“The unique infrastructure of the Mumba botnet means that going after the servers hosting the stolen data is now much more difficult than before,” according to so-called security evangelist at AVG ANZ, Lloyd Borrett.

“As cyber criminals become increasingly sophisticated, it is paramount that consumers and corporations prevent their PCs from becoming the next victim in these dynamic cyber attacks by using anti-virus and link scanning tools such as those that AVG offers free.”