Infosecurity Magazine: Zeus Trojan Now Hiding in Plain Sight – Using Pictures
A new variant of the notorious Zeus banking trojan is making the rounds, with a new approach that uses steganography, a technique that allows it to disguise data inside of an existing file without damaging it.
Dubbed ZeusVM, this particular offshoot uses images as a decoy to retrieve its configuration file, a vital piece for its proper operation. As Malwarebytes researcher Jerome Segura explained, a victim could be looking at “a beautiful picture of a sunset and you would never guess that code used to steal money is hiding within this image.”
Interestingly, he pointed out that steganography itself is an old practice: in ancient Greece, secret instructions carved on wood were covered with wax where an innocent message would fool any outsider.
