A credible threat to the U.S. banking system has been identified by cyber security firm RSA and suggests that plans for a highly organized, large scale online bank heist targeting retail customers in the United States is currently underway.

In an advisory, RSA said it has information suggesting the gang plans to unleash a little-known Trojan program to infiltrate computers belonging to US banking customers and to use the hijacked machines to initiate fraudulent wire transfers from their accounts.

If successful, the effort could turn out to be one of the largest organized banking-Trojan operations to date, Mor Ahuvia, cybercrime communications specialist with RSA’s FraudAction team, said today. The gang is now recruiting about 100 botmasters, each of whom would be responsible for carrying out Trojan attacks against US banking customers in return for a share of the loot, she said.

Each botmaster will be backed by an “investor” who will provide money to buy the hardware and software needed for the attacks, Ahuvia said.

“This is the first time we are seeing a financially motivated cyber crime operation being orchestrated at this scale,” Ahivia said. “We have seen DDoS attacks and hacking before. But we have never seen it being organized at this scale.”

RSA’s warning comes at a time when US banks are already on high alert. Over the past two weeks, the online operations of several major banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo were disrupted by what appeared to be coordinated denial-of-service attacks.

A little-known group called “Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam” claimed credit for the attacks, but some security experts think a nation may have been behind the campaign because of the scale and organized nature of the attacks.

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