A new type of computer virus, a dangerous new ZeuS botnet has reportedly infected almost 75,000 computers in 2,500 organizations around the world, including user accounts of popular social network websites.

“Kneber botnet“, based on a username that linked the infected systems, gathers login credentials to online financial systems, social networking sites and even email systems from infested computers then reports the gathered info back to the “hackers”, said NetWitness.

The discovery of the new virus was dated back in January this year during a routine deployment of the NetWitness advanced monitoring solutions. Further investigation by the Herndon, Virginia-based software security firm revealed “an extensive compromise of commercial and government systems that included 68,000 corporate login credentials, access to email systems, online banking sites, Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail and other social networking credentials, 2,000 SSL certificate files, and dossier-level data sets on individuals including complete dumps of entire identities from victim machines”.

Read the full report by NetWitness here.