Microsoft Takes On Zeus

09 April 2012

An American government cyber security agent looks at code at a cyber defense lab in Idaho

This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.

The Microsoft Corporation is making progress in efforts to stop one of the most harmful cybercrime operations active today. It is called Zeus.

Last week, an American judge ordered the group of cybercriminals to end their illegal activities. A week earlier, federal officials raided office buildings in two states and seized evidence related to the Zeus family of computer software. Richard Boscovich is with Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit.

RICHARD BOSCOVICH: “The objective was to go in there and be able to seize evidence which would lead us to hopefully identify the individuals behind the Zeus family of malware as well as ultimately identify the computers of people all over the world that are compromised. That is, that they have the malware on their computer. Their being victimized, being used to victimized others and they don’t even know about it.”

Cybercriminals use Zeus to create a network of infected computers, or botnet, to steal personal information from computer users. Mr. Boscovich says the operation reaches around the world.

RICHARD BOSCOVICH: “We’ve identified this particular malware was present at any particular point in time in at least thirteen million computers worldwide.”