Citadel Trojan

Have you heard about Citadel Trojan?

Originally Citadel Trojan has a banking Trojan that has been used to enter computer systems of financial institutions to steal money from personal and corporate bank accounts. It is a variant of Zeus malware and it is claimed that the commercial copy of Citadel Trojan has been removed from underground forums in 2012. However, now Citadel Trojan emerges as a tool to steal intellectual property all over the world. Instead of targeting the money and banks, Citadel Trojan moves on to espionage.

It means that all organizations that keep an extensive computer system network to store their data can become subjects to Citadel Trojan's infection. Usually, government agencies are being cited as the highest risk group, considering a few Citadel Trojan infections in a government offices in Poland and Japan. However, one should not rule out the possibility that criminals might target healthcare organization, companies, gas industry, educational institutions and so on.

The most dangerous thing about Citadel Trojan, is that Zeus malware does not look for particular targets, and infects computers at random. The cyber criminals that use Citadel Trojan, on the other hand, are very specific and they can use the trojan to infect users in a particular country, in a specific city. As such, Citadel Trojan has been detected to be stealing intellectual property since October 2012. Security experts also unanimously agree that such shift from stealing banking information to being an espionage tool is unique.

Another thing that makes Citadel Trojan stand out is the fact that cyber criminals can create script attacks for specific targets instead of releasing the infection randomly.

However, even if Citadel Trojan has now additional function, it does not mean that it cannot steal banking information anymore. Since there are no exact symptoms for this infection, it is essential to perform regular system scans with SpyHunter to avoid serious damage. Keeping your antivirus system up-to-date is probably the best precaution measure.