Microsoft and the United States Marshals disrupt cybercrime botnet

A giant network of Zeus infected computers created a botnets.  Microsoft, the Electronic Payments Association and the United States Marshals served a Federal Warrant on computer hosting centers in Illinois and Pennsylvania.  Although AP reported that the US Marshals “accompanied” the Microsoft employees, I am betting that the Microsoft Employees had to ask real nice if they could go along with the US Marshals.  So I would have written the AP article saying that Microsoft employees accompanied US Marshals.  Oh well.

Take a look at the AP article at: https://yhoo.it/zeusbadguystakendown

The Zeus virus operated using social engineering and would ask questions about your account, driver license number, etc.  If you answered the questions, then the Zeus botnet would steal money out of your bank account.  The Zeus virus can easily be customized, so it’s appearance would change  and defeat notifications as a result.  Zeus is the form of virus that is called Malware.

This is just an evil little virus that has done a great deal of damage and likely funded very bad people to do very bad things.

What if you want to make a malware scanner yourself?  Well that is difficult since you would need a copy of the malware to be able to test your virus software.

Microsoft does make an excellent free anti-virus and anti-malware that is no cost for private use:

https://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials

There is no reason to not have an anti-virus on your system.