SpyEye is a
malware
Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...
program that attacks users running
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...
,
Safari
A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...
,
Opera
Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...
,
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...
and
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...
on
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
operating systems.
This malware uses
keystroke logging
Keystroke logging, often referred to as keylogging or keyboard capturing, is the action of recording (logging) the keys struck on a keyboard, typically covertly, so that a person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitore ...
and form grabbing to steal user credentials for malicious use.
[ SpyEye allows hackers to steal money from online bank accounts and initiate transactions even while valid users are logged into their bank account
SpyEye has the ability to insert new fields and alter existing fields when a compromised user's browser displays a web page, allowing it to prompt for user names, passwords, or card numbers, thereby giving hackers information that allows them to steal money without account holders ever noticing. It can save the user's false balance (with fraudulent transactions hidden) so that the next time the user logs in, the fraudulent transactions and real balance are not displayed in the user's browser (though the bank still sees the fraudulent transactions.)
SpyEye emanated from Russia in 2009 and was sold in underground forums for $500+ in which SpyEye advertised features such as keyloggers, Autofill, auto-fill credit card modules, email backups, config files (encrypted), Zeus killer, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP access, Post Office Protocol, POP3 grabbers and FTP grabbers.
Target users and institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada and India were the largest victims of SpyEye; the United States made up 97% of the institutions that fell victim of this malware.
]
Authors of SpyEye
It is believed that the creator of Zeus (malware), Zeus said that he was retiring and had given the source code and rights to sell Zeus to his biggest competitor, the creator of the SpyEye trojan; those same experts warned the retirement was a ruse and expect the developer to return with new tricks.
In 2016, Alexander Andreevich Panin (aliases “Gribodemon” and “Harderman”), the author of SpyEye, was arrested and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud as part of a plea deal with the prosecutor's office. He was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison.
See also
* Conficker
* Command and control (malware)
* Gameover ZeuS, the successor to ZeuS
* Operation Tovar
* Timeline of computer viruses and worms
* Tiny Banker Trojan
* Torpig
* Zeus (malware)
* Zombie (computer science)
References
{{Hacking in the 2010s
Windows trojans