News of a phantom horse that’s been running wild stealing information from banks has turned out to be true. The Sinowal Trojan accessed some 500,000 online bank accounts over the world and stole details of the accounts.

The Sinowal Trojan has finally been tracked by the RSA and according to Sean Brady from RSA’s security division, the Trojan has caused most havoc in U.S. and Canada. The Trojan was first detected in the in February of 2006 and has since affected 270,000 banking accounts and 240,000 credit and debit cards from banks from U.K. U.S. and Australia, amongst others. Interestingly, Russia remains free of the Sinowal Trojan.  Also known as Torpig and Mebroot, Sinowal can get on your system through a method called the drive-by download, i.e., by accessing a website that has the malware on it.

The creators of Sinowal have stayed a step ahead of software that can detect Sinowal and, thus, remained unknown to the RSA and others. A lot of fingers have been pointed at Russia, perhaps since no Russian banks have been affected, and also to the Eastern Europe. Security company Fortinet advices users to stay away from sites where traffic is high and RSA insists users to be wary if their bank starts asking for extra information such as social security number. The RSA is in league with banks and law enforcement agencies to educate people about this Trojan.

Via: BBC