Jabber Zeus

Jabber Zeus was operational from around 2009 until 2010. The crew, consisting of nine core members, sent spam emails containing the Trojan to small businesses. The Trojan would send the victim's banking information, including one-time passwords, in real-time, using the Jabber protocol, to the criminals, who would use the information to drain the victim's bank account of funds and launder it using a massive network of money mules, where it would eventually reach the group. The malware may also have been used for espionage. In September 2010, the Trojan was updated to include several other capabilities designed to enhance its security.

Between September 30 and October 1 of 2010, several key members and money mules for the group were arrested in a joint operation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Russian Federal Security Service, the Security Service of Ukraine, and police agencies in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Although the individuals arrested in Ukraine were quickly released due to core member Vyacheslav Penchukov's government connections and no conspirators were arrested in Russia, the group was effectively shut down by the arrests. A year later, in September 2011, the group and malware would re-emerge as Gameover Zeus.

Organization and activity

Core members

An indictment filed in the District of Nebraska on August 22, 2012, listed nine core Jabber Zeus members:

• Evgeniy Bogachev, alias "lucky12345", a resident of Russia. Bogachev was the primary developer of the Jabber Zeus malware and the preceding Zeus Trojan creation kit.
• Vyacheslav Penchukov, aliases "tank" and "father", a resident of Ukraine. Penchukov coordinated the movement of stolen bank credentials, as well as the money mule network. He was the first person to be notified by the malware of an infection and the only member of the crew to communicate with Bogachev.
• Yevhen Kulibaba, alias "jonni", a resident of the United Kingdom. Kulibaba was the alleged ringleader of the group, but this is disputed by Brian Krebs and Patrick O'Neill, who state that Penchukov or Bogachev, respectively, was the leader.
• Yuriy Konovalenko, alias "jtk0", a resident of the United Kingdom. Konovalenko served as Kulibaba's right-hand man in the UK, providing him with banking details from victims and money mules, and collecting data from his co-conspirators.
• Ivan Klepikov, aliases "petr0vich" and "nowhere", a resident of Ukraine. Klepikov was a system administrator for the crew.
• Alexey Bron, alias "thehead", a resident of Ukraine. Bron managed the transfer of funds using the online payment service WebMoney.
• Alexey Tikonov, alias "kusanagi", a resident of Russia. Tikonov was a coder for the criminal enterprise.
• Maksim Yakubets, alias "aqua", a resident of Russia. Yakubets managed and recruited money mules for the group.
• "mricq", real name unknown, a resident of Ukraine. "mricq" was a coder for the crew.

The indictment charged the core members with bank and computer fraud, racketeering, and identity theft.

Modus operandi and the Jabber Zeus malware

The Jabber Zeus crew operated by distributing, usually via spam emails, and installing the namesake malware onto victims' computers, then using it to gain access to their bank accounts. Money would be stolen from the accounts and transferred to a network of money mules who would launder the money before it eventually reached the criminals. The money mules were usually unaware that they were handling stolen finances. The FBI claimed in 2010 that more than 3,500 such money mules existed. The Jabber Zeus crew primarily targeted small businesses. In 2010, investigators estimated that at minimum, $70 million had been stolen by the criminals, with the true number being much higher.

The crew's activity dates back to at least 2009. The initial version of the Jabber Zeus malware was built from the standard Zeus kit, then known as Zeus 2. The malware was mainly distinguished from other Zeus variants by a modification allowing it to send victims' banking credentials, particularly one-time passwords, to the criminals as soon as the victim logged in. The message was sent via the Jabber protocol, hence the name "Jabber Zeus". In September 2010, Bogachev provided the crew with a specialized version of the malware, known as ZeuS 2.1.0.X. This contained other unique capabilities, including a domain generation algorithm to prevent shutdown attempts, regular expression support, and the ability to infect files. The malware was additionally protected by an encryption key that required Penchukov to purchase each copy individually at a cost of $10,000 per copy.

Infected machines, as with other Zeus variants, formed a botnet that could be accessed and controlled by the group. Analysis of several Zeus variants, including Jabber Zeus, uncovered attempts by this botnet to search for secret and sensitive information in Georgia, Turkey, and Ukraine, leading to suspicion that the malware was additionally used for espionage on behalf of Russia.

On September 11, 2011, the Jabber Zeus malware was updated to Gameover Zeus, the final known variant of Zeus developed by Bogachev.

Conflict with Brian Krebs

On July 2, 2009, the Washington Post published a story by Brian Krebs describing the Jabber Zeus crew's theft of $415,000 from the government of Bullitt County, Kentucky. Shortly after, Krebs was contacted by an individual who had hacked into the crew's Jabber instant message server and was able to read private chats between them. The members of the syndicate were also aware of the Washington Post story, and expressed frustration that their exploits were now public information; in a chat between Penchukov and Bogachev, the former claimed that "now the entire USA knows about Zeus", to which Bogachev concurred: "It's fucked." Members of the crew would keep up with Krebs's writing thereafter.

Krebs also gained access to the messages sent to the money mules by the group, exploiting a security flaw in the money mule recruitment websites that allowed an automated scraper to grab messages sent to any other user; users could, after logging in, read messages to other users by changing a number in the URL. With this access, he was able to prevent and write about several breach attempts by the crew by contacting victim businesses. On December 13, 2009, the crew discovered that Krebs had been let go by the Washington Post prior to this information becoming public, and celebrated the event, with a money mule recruiter hoping for an eventual confirmation of the rumor: "Good news expected exactly by the New Year!"