Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Gauss - the virus that spys on banks

Kaspersky Lab's has reported a new virus they've called Gauss, that can spy on bank transactions and gather account names, passwords and other information. Worringly this virus seems to have been made by the same people who created the Stuxnet worm that infected Iranian nuclear centrifuges. Gauss has infected more than 2,500 personal computers, mostly in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Targets included Lebanon's BlomBank, ByblosBank and Credit Libanais, as well as Citibank and eBay's PayPal online payment system. It's possible that Gauss is being used by Israeli or US agencies to spy on  Lebanese banks to ascertain if they are involved in money laundering for Hezbollah. If true this is a worrying escalation in state sponsored cyberwar.

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