Participating in Anonymous Ops can be more dangerous to Anons than they previously realized: one enterprising Anon may have recently used a DDoS attack to spread malware that could steal the bank information of his or her fellow hackers.
After the Jan. 20 raid on Megaupload, a law enforcement sting that drew the immediate anger of Anonymous hackers, an unnamed attacker took a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack tool called Slowloris, popular with Anonymous supporters, and rigged it to include the Zeus Trojan, a devious piece of malware used to siphon victims’ online banking credentials.
The trojan-infected Slowloris was included in a list of Anonymous-approved DDoS tools released in anticipation of Operation Megaupload, which targeted the Department of Justice, F.B.I. and Recording Industry Association of America (R.I.A.A.), to name a few.
According to Symantec, anyone who acquired the compromised DDoS tool may have also compromised their banking account.
Symantec put a fine point on just how perilous the situation might be for some Anons:
Not only will supporters be breaking the law by participating in DoS attacks on Anonymous hacktivism targets, but may also be at risk of having their online banking and email credentials stolen.
Symantec waxed apocalyptic about the combination of malware and hacktivism, calling it a “dangerous development.”
Anonymous may take all this with a grain of salt, however, considering they were negotiating with Symantec as recently as early February over a 2006 hack of the source code to Symantec’s pcAnywhere.
So it goes.