For the past year, Eastern European-based hackers have been systematically exploiting known Windows NT vulnerabilities to steal customer data, according to reports from the FBI and SANS Institute.

More than a million credit cards have been taken and more than 40 sites have been victimized to date. According to SANS Institute, The Center for Internet Security will be releasing Patchwork, a scanning utility that that automatically checks systems for the vulnerabilities and also looks for files the FBI has found present on many compromised systems. The tool was developed for the FBI by Steve Gibson of Gibson Research. The Center's tools are normally available only to members, but because of the importance of the problem, the Center agreed to make it available to all who need it. Patchwork will scan servers for signs of files left behind by intruders, as well as the presence of a set of known hacking tools. The free utility will also check the system to make sure it is running all the latest security patches from Microsoft. The FBI and Secret Service Thursday released forensic information from ongoing investigations because of the importance of the attacks. According to the data, the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) has been coordinating investigations into a series of hacker activities that specifically target U.S. computer systems associated with e-commerce or e-banking. The hacking activities initiated from Eastern Europe, specifically Russia and the Ukraine, and have penetrated U.S. e-commerce computer systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in unpatched Microsoft Windows NT operating systems.