Quake3World

The CWS variant being researched by Sunbelt turned infected systems into spam zombies and uploaded a wide variety of personal information to a remote server apparently located in the U.S. That server holds a "treasure trove of information" for ID thieves, Eckelberry says.

Sunbelt's research showed that the information being uploaded to the remote server included chat sessions, user names, passwords and bank information, he says. The bank information included details on one company bank account with more than $350,000 in deposits and another belonging to a small California company with over $11,000 in readily accessible cash, he says.

Many of the records being uploaded also contained EBay account information, he says. Among the highly personal bits of information Sunbelt was able to retrieve from the server were one family's vacation plans, instructions to a limo driver to pick up passengers from an airport, and details about one computer user with a penchant for pedophilia.

Sunbelt officials did not say how they accessed the material. But the existence of a large file that the company said it retrieved from the remote server was confirmed by Computerworld. Sunbelt says the file contained user names, addresses, account information, phone numbers, chat session logs, monthly car payment information, and salary data.

"It's one of the most egregious things we have ever seen," says Eckelberry. "We know this kind of data is out there, but this is the first time we actually have the data that the criminals are using."

Information gathered from infected computers is uploaded to the remote server and stored in highly organized files that appear to be accessed by multiple ID thieves, Eckelberry says. The files grow to anywhere from 10MB to 20MB in size before they are refreshed with new information, he says.

tnf wrote:Speaking of ID theft...i went to get an official birth certificate today (i needed one because somehow the social security office has the wrong birthdate entered for me). I got the certificate by filling out a simple form - needed absolutely no id, no social security #....i was a bit surprised..

riddla wrote:I've run into tons of PCs with coolwebsearch installed by a lazy user who just clicked yes when a webpage asked if it was ok