Around the World With Zeus Sphinx: From Canada to Australia and Back

IBM X-Force researchers recently identified new infection campaigns delivering distinct Zeus Sphinx Trojan variants to online banking users in Canada and Australia. This is the first time our researchers have observed Sphinx campaigns with dedicated configurations targeting financial institutions in either of the two countries. We believe they are part of ongoing testing by Sphinx operators.

Sphinx has been keeping low levels of activity since August 2016, when it was detected in attacks on Brazilian banks. The malware authors have been making small, incremental upgrades to the code.

The recent configurations targeting online banking consumers in Canada and Australia are used sparingly in what looks like low-volume testing, not full-blown infection campaigns. The malware’s operators appear to be looking very carefully to determine which geographies offer the paths of least resistance.

Zeus Sphinx Targets Banks in Canada and Australia

In Canada, Sphinx’s operators included URLs for over 33 financial institutes. They focused their target list on credit unions, likely seeing them as the lower hanging fruit in the Canadian financial sector. The malware’s targets are consumer accounts.

Dear reader: this post is part of my research work at IBM X-Force. You can read the complete post here.