The Sinowal trojan has stolen 500,000 online bank accounts and credit and debit cards.

RSA stated the trojan virus has infected computers all over the world.

"The effect has been rattling worldwide with over 2000 domains compromised," said Sean Brady of RSA's security division.

"This is a severe incident on a very detectable scale and we have seen an increase in the number of trojans and their variants, particularly in the States and Canada.", narrated to BBC

In Feb 2006, The RSA's Fraud Action Research Lab said it first detected the Windows Sinowal trojan.

Since then, Mr Brady said, more than 270,000 banking accounts and 240,000 credit and debit cards have been compromised from banking and financial institutions in countries including the US, UK, Australia and Poland and no Russian accounts were hit by Sinowal.

"Drive-by downloads"

RSA distinguished the Sinowal as "one of the most overserious threats to anyone with an internet connection" because it works behind the scenes using a common infection method known as "drive-by downloads".

Sinowal holds regular updates with new variants. Users can get infected without experiencing if they visit a website that has been booby-trapped with the Sinowal malevolent code. Mr Brady said the worrying aspect about Sinowal, alias Torpig and Mebroot, is that it has been in operation for so long.

"Among the important points of pursuit about this particular trojan is that it has existed for two and a half years quietly collecting information," he said. "Any IT professional will tell you it tolls a lot to maintain and to store the information it is gathering.”The gangs behind it have made sure to invest in the infrastructure no doubt because the return and the potential return are so great."

Infection

In April 2007, Google discovered one in ten of the 4.5 million pages it analysed were infected with this Trojan. Sophos researchers reported in 2008 it was finding more than 6,000 newly infected web pages every day, or about one every 14 seconds.

spike in attacks are backed up by another online security. It said from July 2008 to September 2008 the number of reported attacks rose from 10m to 30m. This included trojans, viruses, malware, phishing and mass mailings.

Remedies

"We have a saying here which is 'think before you link,'" said Mr Manky.

"That exactly means keep an eye on where you are going on the web. Be on your guard of clicking on anything in a high traffic site like social networks.

"More traffic in the eyes of cyber criminals means these sites are a target because to these people more traffic means more money," he said.

"People think not clicking on a pop up or an attachment means they are safe. What people don't realise now is that just visiting a website is good enough to infect them."

RSA said it is co-operating with banks and financial institutions the world over to tell them about Sinowal. It has passed information about the virus to law enforcement agencies.