A man and a woman have been arrested in Manchester in connection with the zbot Trojan, the most widespread example of malware specifically designed to help hackers steal money from their victims.

According to the Metropolitan police, zbot – otherwise known as ZeuS – has been used to steal the bank account and credit card details of thousands of victims worldwide.

“The malware enabled the distributors to harvest millions of lines of data from affected machines – hundreds of thousands per day – and given the amount of information stolen, the potential financial gains to the culprits and losses to individuals and institutions are very substantial,” it said in a statement.

The two suspects, both aged 20, have been released on bail.