ZeuS may have been dethroned by Vawtrak as the king of botnets

A compartmentalized botnet with a wide selection of specialized web injects makes it easier to attack bank accounts across the globe.For the attacker who wants the perfect botnet for their particular target but doesn’t want to build it themselves, there is now Vawtrak – a large botnet that can be broken down into smaller pieces and customized with a wide variety of web injects.

Crooks behind Vawtrak, a dangerous banking Trojan, are ramping up its reach and sophistication, security firms have warned. Vawtrak currently ranks as the single most dangerous threat, according to PhishLabs. Only Zeus and its many variants (GameOver, KINS, ZeusVM, Zberp, etc.) taken as a single malware “family” would outrank Vawtrak. Original Vawtrak attacks primarily targeted financial institutions in Japan but recently observed configuration files extend attacks on social networks, online retailers, analytics firms, game portals and more. Geographic distribution has apparently been expanded to specifically target the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Turkey, and Slovakia.