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News recently broke regarding a sophisticated and massive ring of hackers operating in Europe and China, a huge -- and hugely successful -- group that has apparently absconded with loads of customer data and business intellectual property. The computer attack is known as either the Kneber Botnet or ZeuS. It is still up and running, with countries around the world impacted: Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the U.S. are the top five most-targeted nations. Most of the affected machines are running Windows XP or Vista.



Everything from credit card information to contracts and trade secrets appears to have been run off with, but no one is sure entirely how much data has been stolen or where it has gone from there. Altogether, 2,411 companies and organizations are said to have been affected by the criminal operation.

According to NetWitness, which discovered the security breaches, the operation got underway in Germany in 2008, using a familiar type of phishing attack designed to get corporate insiders to click on phony links that would ultimately install malware on their PCs, granting the hackers remote control access to their computers and ultimately the networks to which they were connected.

Some of the companies impacted, which includes more than a few big, Fortune 500-class names, say that no sensitive information has been accessed and that they have closed the holes that allowed the intrusion to happen, but the majority of companies either aren't saying much or are being completely mute about the incident.

Meanwhile, investigators are trying to track down those responsible, with current signs pointing to an Eastern European crime syndicate using computers located there and in China to do their dirty deeds. Scary stuff.



Businesses are warned that the virus in question -- called Zeus or ZeuS -- is quite difficult to detect even with up-to-date antivirus software. This is the primary reason why its malware family is considered the largest botnet on the internet: Some 3.6 million PCs are said to be infected in the U.S. alone. Security experts are advising that businesses continue to offer training to users to prevent them from clicking hostile or suspicious links in emails or on the web while also keeping up with antivirus updates, whatever good those might do. ZeuS can be detected and removed after the fact, but it remains unclear if modern antivirus software is effective at preventing all of its variants from taking root.

What happens now? Hard to say, but you might be well advised to keep a closer eye than usual on your credit report and bank account. More news as it develops.