The U. S. experts have found that the recently reported cyberattack, named Kneber botnet, is the assumed name of the already existing computer virus 'Zeus Trojan'.

As reported by Netwitness Corp., Kneber has so far, affected more than 75,000 computers in 2,500 companies and Government agencies, throughout the world.

"Kneber does not involve any new malicious threats. Thus, computer users with up-to-date security software should already be protected from this threat", said Gerrit Hoekman, an expert from Netwitness.

Kneber attempts to trace the login identifications used in the online financial systems, social networking sites and e-mail systems.

This tracing can enable the hackers to take away secret and secured corporate and Government information.

According to the Wallstreet Journal, the hacking attempts initiated in 2008, in Europe and china.

“More than half of the infected systems in the Kneber botnet also contained the competing Waledac Trojan, probably because those behind the attacks wanted to build some redundancy into their attacks. The coexistence of ZeuS and Waledac suggests the goals of resilience and survivability and potential deeper cross-crew collaboration in the criminal underground", said the officials at Netwitness.

The experts concluded that in most of the cases, these attacks hit the individuals who hold a high position in the organizations and are tricked into visiting malicious sites or downloading malicious software onto their systems.