Zeus Panda virus (guide) - updated Jul 2021

What is Zeus Panda virus?

Zeus Panda is a banking trojan that targets numerous countries around the world, although exempts Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan

The banking trojan posses multiple capabilities of other popular data stealers like Emotet or Hancitor.

Zeus Panda virus is a trojan horse developed for data-stealing purposes. As apparent from the name, it comes from Zeus malware, and was first spotted making rounds in Brazil in 2016. It infiltrates systems with the help of sophisticated infection pattern that employs exploit kits (such as Angler, Sundown, Neutrino, etc.), malspam campaigns, fake updates, and drive-by-downloads.^[1]

Once inside, the virus performs numerous system changes, and can sometimes remain undetected by AV engines and sandbox environments^[2] due to its evasion techniques. Zeus Panda virus is capable of performing man-in-the-middle,^[3] keystroke logging, and form grabbing attacks. Additionally, the malware has the capability of leaving the host before starting the infection if the keyboard code is set to Russian, Belarussian, Ukrainian, or Kazakh.

Before installing itself on the system, Panda Banker Trojan performs language checks and aborts the installation in case the system uses the aforementioned language as default. Next, the Trojan checks whether there are any analysis tools running on the system.

Zeus Panda Banking Trojan enrolls each infected host into a botnet and assigns a unique bot ID per computer. It also creates a special registry key to assign itself as a startup program (making it possible to activate itself during each computer boot).

The main objectives of this banking Trojan are:

• Steal login information for victim’s bank accounts, social media accounts, and any other online accounts the victim uses;
• Generate fraudulent transactions and steal money from the victim’s bank account.

To achieve these goals, the malware employs web injects that insert HTML codes into the network traffic of a web browser. Panda Banking virus mainly targets Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, and Panda processes to inject itself in.

Zeus Panda virus (also known as Panda Banker) is a malicious variant of Zeus Trojan that steals victim's private data and uses it to make fraudulent transactions via victim's bank account.

Zeus Panda virus intercepts the traffic of an Internet browser and modifies the content of websites displayed in the browser. Experts agree that malware removal is a highly complicated task because this virus is apparently a product of very experienced malware developers.

It uses advanced obfuscation techniques and tries to evade elimination at all costs. Besides, it stays on the compromised computer without showing any signs of existence, allowing it to steal private information for months or years.

If you suspect that your machine has been endangered by the described variant of Zeus virus, we highly recommend you to remove Zeus Panda malware as soon as you can. After the elimination, you should scan your PC with SpyHunter 5Combo Cleaner, Malwarebytes to remove virus damage done to the device, such as broken Windows Registry keys.

The virus will grab your credentials and other sensitive information without any doubts and send it directly to cybercriminals, says the Dieviren.de team^[5]. Consequently, you might have to deal with problems such as identity theft or financial loss.

Distribution of Panda Trojan

Researchers from Proofpoint^[6] suggest that this Trojan spreads via malicious spam and at least three exploit kits including Angler EK, Nuclear EK, and Neutrino EK. Analysts point out that criminals behind the Trojan employed geo-filtering to target Australian and UK banks mainly.

Speaking of the malicious spam campaigns, there are two of them. The first one spreads a tricky Word document that downloads a gert.exe file from 78.128.92[.]31. The spam campaign is aimed at mass media and manufacturing companies, and it leverages CVE-2014-1761 and CVE-2012-0158 vulnerabilities.

The second campaign also spreads compromised Word documents. During this campaign, a small number of employees working at financial companies were targeted. The malicious attachment downloads the Godzilla loader which then downloads Panda Banker (panda.dat).

This threat can steal banking credentials and send them to a remote server, accessible only by crybercriminals.

Recently, the criminals behind this Trojan started using BlackHat SEO techniques to position compromised web pages at the top of Google search results. Consequently, people searching for information related to banks or financial information would get results with malicious pages shown in the top positions.

After clicking on such search results, the victim would get redirected to deceptive sites suggesting to download a compromised Word document that contains Zeus Panda virus direct payload.

Remove Zeus Panda Banker virus with the help of antivirus tools

It is extremely hard to remove the malicious virus, so do not even try to look for the Trojan’s components manually. Even the eyes of an experienced computer technician can hardly notice the activity of this virus, so you will have to scan your computer with automatic malware detection software in order to locate it and eliminate it securely.

Please use the instructions provided below to perform a safe boot and begin Zeus Panda removal. The sooner you will remove the virus, the better. Do not forget to change all your passwords and inform your bank about this virus as possible risks associated with your account to protect yourself from financial loss.