Gangs Infect 10,000 Websites to Steal Users' Bank Details

'Italian Job' is next stage in cyber identity crime - Viruses planted on charity and tourism pages

Hackers have launched an assault on websites in Italy and around the world dubbed the Italian Job in a move seen by internet security experts as the next step in the escalating problem of cyber crime.

Gangs presumed to be based in eastern Europe have probably infected more than 10,000 web pages on popular websites including travel agents, hotels, charities and government departments. Most of the sites are in Italy, though the attack has also spread to Spain and the US.

Using an attack tool kit available for £350 on the internet from Russia, the attackers implanted codes that download a "keylogger" onto the computer of anyone opening up those sites. The keylogger allows the hackers to monitor any activity on the infected machine - in effect to control the computer. That gives them access to any bank details, credit card information or passwords that are entered.

It is not known how many computers have been infected by the attacks, which are believed to have begun in the middle of last week. Security experts put the numbers at tens of thousands.

Dan Hubbard of the Californian internet security firm Websense, said Italy may have been targeted because of the seasonal popularity of its travel websites or because the hackers had discovered a way to penetrate an Italian bank's firewalls to steal identities. "We often call this sort of thing the perfect crime because it is so difficult to track down the perpetrators."

Trojan attacks are not new, but experts say the scale of the latest onslaught is unparalleled, as is its focus on established websites to steal banking identities.

"This is a paradigm shift. We can expect to see this kind of thing being replicated now for the next five or six months," said David Perry, a director of another west coast web security firm, Trend Micro.

Researchers at the company have tracked the attack back to servers based in Hong Kong, San Francisco and Chicago. The FBI and specialist police in Europe are trying to follow it back to source.

Mr Perry said one reason the Italian Job was proving so effective was that it was programmed to spot many different types of weaknesses in computer security systems. "It looks for a wide spectrum of vulnerabilities in a computer, acting like a sort of Swiss army knife with many different ways to pierce through the protection."

The initial assault on websites appears to have slowed, but as long as websites are infected with the attack tool kit, many users will continue to be vulnerable without realizing it. Experts say there tends to be a lull followed by a renewed outburst in a different part of the world.