Zeus Trojan targets UK government

During his speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, UK’s foreign secretary William Hague revealed that the UK government has been targeted with a e-mail campaign containing the well-known information-stealing Zeus Trojan.

The campaign started in December, and took the form of e-mails purportedly coming from the White House which contained a link that would take the victims to a page where a variant of the malware would be downloaded.

“Our experts were able to clear up the infection, but more sophisticated attacks such as these are becoming more common,” he said, and followed up with two more examples of attempted information-stealing, V3.co.uk reports.

The first one was aimed at stealing information regarding UK’s nuclear program. The second one was allegedly sent by a “hostile intelligence agency” and had malicious computer code embedded in e-mails professing to be about a forthcoming visit to the region. He claims that the government’s systems managed to spot the trick and prevent the e-mails from reaching the intended victims.

After sharing that information with the attendees, Hague pushed the question of an agreement on cyber behavior among international allies – an accord that the UK government considers heavily overdue.

In a bid to jumpstart the beginning of negotiations, he offered to hold a conference in London later this year.