Authorities Arrest Two Individuals Believed Responsible for Thieving Banking Trojan Dridex (Citadel)

Just like the tides of the ocean change and the sun rises over the horizon, cybercrooks will have their day when their comforting sunrises are put to an end. It just so happens that two men in Norway responsible for the creation and distribution of the Dridex, or aptly known as the Citadel Trojan, have been arrested by authorities. You can say these two guys will no longer have a bright horizon in their malicious activities of spreading some of the most dangerous banking Trojan threats around currently.

Authorities were tipped off by an anonymous source that lead their investigation to what is believed to be a key figure in an international organized crime gang responsible for distributing the Dridex (Bugat, Cridex, Dyre) banking Trojans. Along with their distribution of Dridex, also called Citadel, comes as a serious threat to banking institutions and several banking accounts accessed over the internet. As we known all-to-well ever since the introduction of the famous Zeus infection, banking Trojans are relentless in their ability to pilfer logging credentials to banking accounts allowing crooks to steal money.

Reportedly, one of the cybercrooks taken down for their actions in creating and spreading the Dridex banking Trojan, is charged with running the Citadel malware as a service product where it was used to infect user's computers with spyware to collect and log keystrokes and capture video from the affected computer. The operations of Citadel date back to 2012, a time where many known cases resulted in distribution of the Reveton ransomware threat.

The other cybercrook arrested for his involvement with Dridex or Citadel Trojan remains to be unnamed at this time. However, the unidentified thieves, including the Russian individual, are facing possible extradition to the US to face serious charges.

As a quick background on banking Trojans such as Dridex or Citadel, such threats are known to give the upper hand to banking thieves who take to the internet to perform their virtual “hold-ups.” In essence, Dridex or Citadel Trojans are designed to gather as much information as they can all while working in the background of an infected computer. In doing such, Citadel, just like the Zeus Trojan, may perform its malicious activities in the background not giving a computer user any indication of its presence.

Fortunately, right now is a good time for us to celebrate in knowing that the perpetrators behind one of the most aggressive banking Trojan threats is facing the music in the court of law for their malicious and egregious thieving actions. It is possible that we could see a slow demise of the Dridex and Citadel threat unless the cyber gang behind the malware has retained some successors to take over the daily operation of stealing money over the internet.