ZeuS vs. Zeus Killer

Back at the beginning of February, we wrote about the SpyEye toolkit and its author’s intention of encroaching upon Zeus toolkit’s turf by offering a feature that promises to remove the Zeus bot from the targeted computer and supplant it with SpyEye’s.

Two months later, the Zeus authors are issuing updates that offer additional functionality – with an additional price increase, of course. According to Brian Krebs, the price list is as follows:

• Windows7/Vista compatibility module – $2,000
• Backconnect module – $1,500
• Firefox form grabbing – $2,000
• Jabber notification – $500
• FTP clients saved credentials grabbing module – $2,000
• VNC module — $10,000 (reportedly no longer being sold/supported).

Not one to shy away from a challenge, the SpyEye author pushes out the next (1.1) version of the toolkit, with the additional ability of injecting content into IE and Firefox browsers and, thus, undoing the security offered by banking tokens – which makes the price of SpyEye jump to $1,500.

Also, both toolkits now supposedly contain also anti-piracy technology, to make sure that the toolkit is run on only one system. Not surprisingly, there is no honor among thieves. I don’t know about you, but this tidbit made me chuckle.