Chalk another one up to fear mongering: a supposedly "new" virus threat has been making the rounds as of late, dubbed "Kneber" and ballyhooed by some as a new breed of superduperbug.

Symantec is calmly and assuredly reporting that Kneber is not a new threat at all, but simply a pseudonym for the good old Zeus Trojan. Well, old by internet standards, anyway: one month or so, to be precise. And not really "good" per se.

The name Kneber simply refers to a particular group of zombie computers, far flung and infected - also known as a "botnet" - under the control of one ne're-do-well owner or group. The actual Trojan itself is the same Trojan.Zbot, or Zeus to its friends, which has been observed, analyzed and protected against since it was discovered way back in early January, 2010.

Symantec explains that since Zeus/Zbot toolkits are widely available on the underground economy, it is not uncommon for attackers to create new strains like Kneber, but they're still part and parcel of the same overall Zeus botnet.

Though it is true that this Kneber string of the overall Zeus botnet is fairly large, furthermore, it does not involve any new malicious threats. Thus, computer users with up-to-date security software should already be protected from this threat.

Long story short: Update your anti-virus if it's not already set to update automatically (which it should be).

Symantec's Security Response blog has some interesting information on how a ne're-do-well can use the Zeus toolkit to create their very own string of the overall botnet at www.symantec.com.