Poker app Trojan horse virus stole credit card data
Wednesday January 30,2013 : WARNING ON FACEBOOK POKER APP
Reports that a Trojan horse virus stole credit card data
The anti-virus specialist company ESET has reported that a Trojan horse virus affecting users of a Facebook poker app has been stealing credit card data.
The virus apparently infiltrated a Facebook app from ZyngaPoker ESET announced Monday.
Introducing a note of international intrigue, the Israeli newspaper The Times of Israel reported that some 16,000 Israelis had been impacted by the virus, and suggested that the motive for the attack may not have been an attempt to steal credit card data but rather part of the international cyber war against Israel.
"The Trojan horse, called Poker Agent, apparently targeted Zynga’s poker game, hijacking the login and credit card information needed to play online. If a user has not submitted that information, the active virus presents a page, in Hebrew, directing the user to a phony Facebook page that requires them to fill in the missing data before they can continue playing," the newspaper reveals.
ESET said it had been tracing the progress of Poker Agent for over a year and had informed Israeli police and the National Cyber Bureau and was coordinating with CERT, the international computer threat organisation.
The anti-virus company said that law enforcement officials in Israel had opened an investigation, and that as a consequence it had decided not to release details earlier in order not to hamper the investigation.
Poker Agent is apparently only infecting Israeli users, ESET Israel director Ronen Moas said. “This is not the first time we have seen these kinds of threats on Facebook, but it is definitely the first time we have seen an attack targeting Israeli users specifically.
“The fact is that Israel is a small country with a limited number of people who speak Hebrew, and that has somewhat protected us, because hackers prefer to write attacks that will affect a larger number of people in bigger countries, where they can profit more,” Moas said.
That being the case, he added, it appeared that the distributors of the virus were motivated by something other than money. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this attack turned out to be part of the international cyber terror campaign being conducted against Israel daily,” Moas said.
