Saw this one on Security-Sh3ll figured I'd post it here, maybe it'd open a discussion. I was personally amazed by the number of unique banking trojans F-Secure found on the net at the end of 2008, didn't know it was that high.

"The latest advances in Internet bank theft include the use of Trojan programs that can slip onto an unsuspecting computer's hard drive through a viral link on a greeting card or in e-mail spam. The Trojan hides out on the hard drive and waits until the computer user logs onto a banking Web site, and then acquires user names and passwords."

As Willie Sutton the bank robber said when asked why he robbed banks, 'because that's where the money is'."

Better to go after the bank than try some spam attack which has a very low return, one in a million. However, I am still suprised by the number of bits of software, but I wonder how many are mutations of the same code change automatically to hide. What I wonder is how many developers there are, not that we will be able to get a solid number.

As an aside I get a kick out of reporters...

One, only one? ...and they didn't even cite him.

Not to mention that bypassing AV has become trivial. Using MetaSploits msfencode you can package executables to bypass AV. John Strand has a video on it.
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/bypassing-anti-virus-with-metasploit

I'll have to add this to my Muts list. I'll get around to them all eventually.