Okay, almost three years and the “Sinowal Trojan” and an online gang of Russian thieves has over half a million credit card numbers at their disposal. Oh yay.

On Friday morning, the RSA FraudAction Research Lab reported it had uncovered a digital cache of more than a half million credit card numbers and online bank account logins and passwords that have been acquired during the past two-and-a-half years by what the researchers believe is a Russian online gang.

These caches of stolen identity information are created automatically by digital Trojan horse programs that steal the information from computer users after they have taken over their systems. The Trojans are usually distributed by networks of zombie computers known as botnets.

The RSA researchers said that the cache they had discovered had been collected by a program known as the Sinowal Trojan. Sinowal is particularly insidious because it is technically sophisticated. (via NYT)

A few ideas on how you can ensure you don’t fall victim to stuff like this:

• Change your passwords often, people. And make them HARD TO DISTINGUISH. If a computer bot sees “Qu4xj09248sjkenHFK124″ it might not quite realize it’s a password. Before you freak out about that garbled mess…
• Write passwords down on a sheet of paper, rather than letting them sit “in storage” on your computer. Clear out your computer’s cache, saved form info, passwords, etc.
• Use anti-virus software. I don’t care if it’s Norton, McAfee, or the free AVG. Get it, use it, and use it often. I set up scheduled scans for 2am every night.

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