Spanish police have detained three hackers who are suspected of infecting 13 million PCs with viruses to steal valuable personal and bank data from users in 190 countries, dpa quoted police as saying today. Police described the "zombie computer network" created by the three Spaniards as the biggest in the world so far. The men, who were aged between 25 and 31 years old, did not have particularly advanced computer skills, but bought the programme they were using on the black market. They lived off hiring parts of their so-called Mariposa (Butterfly) network to cybercriminals as well as using or selling user names, passwords, banking credentials and credit card information for illicit financial transactions. The virus was also capable of infecting USB memory sticks. The network began spreading the virus on a large scale in May 2009, gradually infecting computers in half of the world's 1,000 top companies as well as in more than 40 banks. One of the suspects had personal data from more than 800,000 users stored in his computer. In December, Spanish police, the FBI and several cybersecurity companies managed to dismantle the network, but the suspects recovered control over part of the infected computers and launched a counter-attack, police said. The three were later detained and released with charges. Any up-to-date anti-virus programme could eliminate the virus, Luis Corrons from Panda Security said. However, the suspects kept modifying the virus to elude security barriers, he added.
