The FBI has opened an investigation into an Internet virus dubbed "Bugbear" that seeks to allow intruders to get unauthorized access to global banks and finance institutions.
FBI spokesman Mr Bill Murray said the probe was launched after a complaint that the e-mail virus, sometimes known as an Internet worm because of the way it replicates, was targeting financial institutions.
"The FBI has opened an investigation into the Bugbear case," he said. "We have noticed ... that some 200,000 systems have been infected. This has particularly targeted financial institutions."
He added: "The worm basically determines whether you're a financial institution and if so, it will install a 'back door' to grant unauthorized access to the institution."
Mr Murray said he did not know if any banking information had been compromised but said that the virus, which spreads by e-mail, had coding that appeared to target more than 1,000 US and global banks and other finance organizations.
Security firms raised alerts last week on the Bugbear virus, saying it was spreading rapidly and could allow a hacker to take control of infected computers. But what was more startling was that the virus contained coding that appeared to direct attacks at hundreds of US banks and other financial institutions, which could enable a hacker to access a bank account of the user of an infected computer.
"The worm has a large list of domains belonging mostly to banks," said F-Secure, an Internet security firm. "At startup the worm checks the domain name of an infected computer and then compares it to its internal list. If the domain name matches, the worm enumerates cached passwords and sends them to a randomly selected e-mail address from the list of addresses."
The industry is working with the FBI and US agencies to track down the source of the virus, according to Ms Suzanne Gorman at the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry cybersecurity group.
"We've never had something directly targeted to financial institutions such as this," Gorman said, adding that there were "no reports of successful penetration" of computer networks of banks or other finance institutions.
AFP