The Zeus malware R&D program

Trusteer captured and analyzed a new version (2.1) of the Zeus financial malware and found that it has added sophisticated new mechanisms to commit online fraud and remain the Trojan of choice for criminals.

Zeus has not only improved its business logic but also its ability to avoid detection and automatic analysis by antivirus vendors. Zeus is under the spotlight of security vendors, banks, and law enforcement, which forces its developers to continually improve it to avoid losing business to competing malware like Bugat, Clampi, and SpyEye.Just like commercial application developers, the creators of Zeus run an R&D program to ensure it can avoid detection and side-step the growing number of IT security mechanisms designed to detect, block and eliminate it.

More about Zeus v2.1: http://www.net-security.org