What the Zeus Virus Looks Like ~ po themes

Why it's so hard to find a McRib

Lovers of Elusive McRib Pork Patty Track Their SightingsBefore traveling to visit his parents in Nebraska last winter, Jeremy Duensing consulted what he always checks before a trip: the "McRib Locator" website.To his delight, he found a McDonald's (NYSE: MCD - News) restaurant near Omaha that, unlike most of the burger chain's 14,000 U.S. restaurants, had the McRib on its menu. He bought six of the pork sandwiches.

Five drinks that help you de-stress

Stressful day? Don't reach for a candy bar. Try one of these soothing liquids instead. © Michael Blann/Digital Vision/Thinkstock 1. Drink a glass of milk. It contains tryptophan, which as it is metabolized is converted to mood-boosting serotonin. Plus, its calcium, magnesium and potassium content may help keep blood pressure down.2.

10 dumb money moves to avoid

My 28-year-old niece and I were recently talking about money. She's (finally!) become interested in accumulating more and spending less, and because I've been in the personal finance business in one capacity or another since before she was born, she logically assumed that I've always done everything right and know exactly what to do at all times.

The fastest-growing American cities

The U.S.' emerging cities are not experiencing the kind of super-charged growth one sees in urban areas of the developing world, notably China and India. But unlike Europe, North America's population is slated to expand by well over 100 million people by 2050--much of this growth in the U.S. and much of it driven by continued immigration.

How to detect ATM skimming

Skimming devices placed over card-reader slots capture your information.The next time you pull up to an ATM, take a closer look at the machine. Does it look a little clunkier than usual?Look too at what's around you: Are there mirrors? Is there a brochure holder over your shoulder? Does it look like there might be a false panel or an extra light bar attached to the machine?If something looks or feels amiss.

I thought I knew about all the phishing techniques, and they all sounded pretty avoidable. How in the hell had I never heard of this? It’s a beauty and it’s called a Zeus Virus.

Zeus is a financial malware. It infects consumer PCs, waits for them to log onto a list of targeted banks and financial institutions, and then steals their credentials and sends them to a remote server in real time. Additionally, it may inject HTML into the pages rendered by the browser, so that its own content is displayed together (or instead of) the genuine pages from the bank’s web server. Thus, it is able to ask the user to divulge more personal information, such as payment card number and PIN, one time passwords and TANs, etc.

Not only can most virus software not detect it, but you can be looking right at the effects of it and fail to see it yourself. Unless you know. Then it’s painfully obvious. I didn’t know. I had no idea that there existed a virus, so devious that it could redirect you from a legit financial website, to a bogus confirmation form. Of course I knew about fake phishing emails, and I receive them from time to time. Some are more well done than others, but in the end, you can figure them out easily. Usually right-clicking the link they want you to follow and selecting “Copy link location” will show you that the URL is not related to your website. Pretty simple.

Detecting the Zeus virus would have been easy as hell. If I had any idea such a scam existed. I went to Wellsfargo.com. Typed in my username and PW on the LEGIT site and was taken to a security confirmation form. I knew I had come from the legit site, so I wasn’t too worried. I was slightly annoyed, but I looked up and saw “https://online.wellsfargo.com” It looked good. So I filled out the required info.
Shortly thereafter I had the same requests from eBay.com, and Paypal.com. I thought it was legit, but did not fill it out as I thought it was way more information than they needed. I figured this was a new trend in online security. Then I went to USAA.com to check my car loan and insurance. I got that same form. Hell, this one was probably worse. Every number that pertains to my financial self was on there. But I figured, “hey they already have it” so I filled it in and clicked submit. The page just reset. I wondered what I did wrong and called USAA. Five minutes later, I was feeling like an idiot. My initial reaction was “Virus? No, no, you don’t understand. I came from a legit page.” But it all made sense. So I don’t know what type of fall out there will be from my parting with such information, but I’m taking all sorts of steps to protect myself.

Hopefully I can protect you too. Ignorance, and maybe arrogance caused me to divulge my information. I can at least get rid of your ignorance. Though I have a feeling arrogance is another matter. You’re probably thinking right now “How could you be so stupid?!” arrogant bastard. Anyways, now that it seems my computer is owned by this Zeus crap, I have quite the opportunity to show you the BS forms.