The last six months saw an increase in password stealing, as malware levels dropped

Predictions of an increase in attacks on social networks by password-stealing Trojans this year have been confirmed.

In McAfee’s 2010 Threat Predictions, it anticipated that attacks on social networks by password-stealing Trojans and other malware would increase in 2010, and during the current quarter it has seen several examples of that prediction in action. The most prominent of this is the Zeus family, which it usually observes as PWS-Zbot and Spy-Agent.bw, and is the pre-eminent password-stealing Trojan malware, according to its threat report for the first quarter of 2010.

The report said: “Zeus is just one of the key tools of cyber criminals, who often tie password stealers with other types of illegal online material. In this quarter we saw all kind of goodies being installed with Zeus. And whom do you imagine was the prime target for these attacks? Facebook users.”