Internet Underground Signs Point to ZeuS and SpyEye Merger

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There are signs on underground Internet forums suggesting that the development of the notorious ZeuS trojan has stopped and the code base will be merged with that of it's biggest rival, SpyEye.

It seems that ZeuS, the most successful information stealing trojan to date and the weapon of choice for cyberfraudsters everywhere for many years, might have been too popular for its own good.

Because the trojan has been getting a lot of heat from authorities, the security industry and the media lately, it's author has started giving signs that he's giving up on his creation.

And the person chosen to carry on the ZeuS legacy is the individual that a lot of people would have less expected – the creator of SpyEye.

SpyEye is a trojan, which appeared in late 2009 and resembles ZeuS in much of its functionality, making them direct competitors.

In fact SpyEye has even been advertised as the ZeuS killer, because it removes the ZeuS trojan from infected systems.

Brian Krebs reports that Harderman, or Gribodemon, as the the SpyEye developer calls himself, has announced the big news on one of the leading hacker forums.

According to him, Slavik has given him the source code for ZeuS free of charge, under the condition that he continues to support the people who paid for the trojan.

Harderman claims that Slavik plans to retire from the Internet completely. Whether this is true or is only a diversion, so he can change identities, can be speculated upon.

In an interview given to MalwareIntelligence earlier this year, Harderman estimated that the ZeuS author makes over $1 million per year. Therefore, Slavik's retirement wouldn't be so far fetched, as financially he's probably set.

The SpyEye author also expressed his intention to merge the ZeuS and SpyEye code bases in order to create a powerful new trojan.

He plans on significantly increasing the price of this new threat in order to avoid it becoming too widespread and having the same fate as ZeuS.