Dueling Botnets Fight Turf War in Cyberspace

A new Russian botnet is on the loose, spreading a Trojan horse that not only steals data -- like any good Trojan -- but then deletes a rival Trojan from infected machines.

That's really sweet, but I wouldn't exactly call it the Good Samaritan Trojan either. The new Spy Eye toolkit, discovered by Ben Greenbaum, a senior security researcher at Symantec, began showing up on cybercrime sites in December.

Spy Eye is battling Zeus, a similar crimeware Trojan that steals online banking credentials, according to Symantec. Spy Eye has a feature, "kill Zeus," which is meant to disarm its close rival.

This sort of cyberspace equivalent of gangs slugging it out for territory isn't new, according to The Register, which has reported Trojan battles among Srizbi, Beagle, Netsky and Mydoom dating back to 2007.