Zeus collapses
The Zeus
botnet was switched off, but as its hacker operators pulled the plug they also
self destructed more than 100,000 infected computers in the
network.
According to the Washington PostZeus/Zbot was a software kit that
sprung up in March that harvests financial and personal data from PCs through
the use of a Trojan. It did jolly well because it managed to make each
installation appear different to virus trackers so that it would be more
difficult to remove.
However Zeus also had a "kill operating system" and when
the operators decided to shut the botnet down it was actually executed some time
last month. Activating the Kill switch resulted in a bluescreen and
subsequent difficulty booting the OS. However it did not do much else.
It is
not as if the hackers were trying to cover their tracks because the Trojan
binaries and the startup registries were still there. In fact the infected
computers will still run the trojan and will start re-establishing the
botnet.
Quite why the hackers wanted the botnet switched off for a couple of
days is anyone's guess.