ZeusVM Banking Malware Expected to Advance from Leaked KINS Toolkit

The Zeus malware has long been a serious threat to online banking accounts and consumers who have been victimized by the threat compromising their account login credentials. Throughout different variations of the Zeus malware, it has been morphed into ZeusVM, which is a counterpart of a toolkit that generations the KINS banking Trojan whose source code was recently leaked over the internet.

Just like a recipe to bake a cake, the ZeusVM threat and KINS banking Trojan have had their ingredients in the form of source code leaked over the internet. In doing such, the source code allows cybercrooks to wage the malware against a plethora of computers turning them into zombies awaiting instructions to carry out malicious activities to target online banking accounts.

The ZeusVM threat and KINS banking Trojan are essentially botnets, which is a collaboration of compromised systems infected with the malware that awaits instructions to perform mischievous actions. The reach of ZeusVM and KINS banking Trojan has security researchers scrambling as the malware threats can effectively be hidden as common files, such as a perceived-as-harmless JPG file. Use of the now-exposed source code for KINS and ZeusVM, all bundled up as a kit, makes it relatively easy for hackers to launch their own botnet network and initiate attacks on other online systems.

Advancement and spread of ZeusVM is expected as security researchers have uncovered the KINS toolkit, which bundles up the source code that allows hackers to spread the threat or use it for attacking online systems. With a relatively easy method to obtain the source code, the KINS toolkit paves a method for spreading files like JPGs or others with encrypted code that can potentially unleash the ZeusVM malware.

Through video below, demonstrated in a detailed tech-savvy way how the latest KINS 2.0.0.0 toolkit includes a binary code builder making it ready for infiltration on vulnerable systems. Additionally, the video briefly demonstrates how cybercrooks can use the toolkit method to embed encrypted configuration code onto a JPG file, making it relatively easy to spread the threat without apparent road blocks.