Zeus Trojan four times more common than SpyEye

Banking security firm Trusteer has released some interesting stats on the infection rates of the infamous ZeuS Trojan and its close relation SpyEye, claiming that ZeuS is four times more prolific than its younger rival.

The vendor collected the data via its financial malware removal tool which has so far wiped malware from 1.6 million desktops. This clean up operation found that nearly three quarters of those infections were either versions of ZeuS or SpyEye.

"What's interesting is that for each user infected with SpyEye, four users were infected with Zeus," said Trusteer chief executive Mickey Boodaei.

"The harsh truth is that, since the ZeuS crime kit became free of charge, its distribution almost doubled. That said, SpyEye continues to gain market share and has became the second most distributed financial malware with a significant advantage over the rest of the malware crime kits."

SpyEye is certainly becoming a growing menace to organisations. Just last week Trusteer warned that the Trojan had expanded its global reach to target even more countries, while adapting its code to bypass banks' transaction monitoring systems.

The Trojan's writers also appear to follow Agile software development practices, meaning that the malware can be updated very quickly in response to the most recent attempts to block it.