12 Feb 2010

'Aggressive malware sector' sees virus-on-virus attacks

The malware sector has now become so aggressive that cybercriminals are attacking each other's viruses in order to gain greater control over infected computers, it has been claimed.

Richard Wang, manager of SophosLabs US, said the Zeus botnet has been attacked in recent weeks by the new Spy Eye malware and this has led to users of Spy Eye gaining control of all systems that had previously been infected with Zeus.

He commented: "Using one form of malware to attack another is a means of increasing market share and thereby the value of a botnet or other set of controlled computers."

According to reports, the less popular Spy Eye malware has now begun searching out its rival trojan after a new feature was added to the malicious code that allows it to erase Zeus.

At present, Spy Eye is being sold for almost a fifth of what premium versions of Zeus would cost, making this one of the favourite new products available to hackers.