An inquiry into a large scale, global internet fraud scheme, elaborately designed to steal sensitive personal information, has led the Metropolitan Police to arrest two computer hackers from Manchester, over the alleged major role they have played in the scam.

The dangerous Trojan program has affected thousands of computers all over the world. In Europe's first arrests, the hackers, a man and a woman aged 20, were questioned and now have been bailed out till March 2010, as the Police undertake further investigation.

The investigation started when computers across the globe started getting attacked with the ZeuS or Zbot Trojan, which the Police have described as "a sophisticated malicious computer program". The program aims at stealing records containing online bank account details, passwords and credit card numbers in order to steal cash from different sources. The Trojan then also copies passwords for all social networking websites accessed regularly, and each computer is then made to forward the data to servers which are controlled by the hackers.

The Manchester pair was arrested in 3 November, under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act and the 2006 Fraud Act. Details of the arrest were kept under wraps till the questioning was complete.