They’re calling it The Italian Job. But forget Michael Caine and the Minis, this is all done with computers. According to computer security firm Trend Micro, there’s been a massive wave of crime affecting some 4,500 travel sites in Italy. Using a program, a trojan is installed on the computers of visitors to the sites, and take control of those computers, recording all the information entered, including personal and financial data, which is then automatically sent to a server in Chicago. However, computers are only vulnerable to the trojan if they’re using versions of Internet Explorer that aren’t up to date. Of course, attacks like this are nothing new, they happen every day. What singles this out is its scale. It’s the largest recorded attack to use malicious software spread by using infected web sites. Whoever initiated the attacks controls the software remotely, and can re-program infected computers to send the information elsewhere. “Your system belongs to them,” said David Perry of Trend Micro. “If Chicago is shut down, they could move anywhere in the world.” To date the hackers haven’t been identified, nor the reason why they singled out Italian tourism sites, or how many computers were affected.
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