Who needs a gun? This computer virus will rob your online bank account

Everybody's worst online banking fears have come true -- for some German banking customers. The rest of us can hold our collective breath and hope that we don't have to deal with this, although it seems inevitable that some of us will.

A cyber-criminal gang in the Ukraine has developed a very elaborate system for not just stealing the money from bank accounts, but tricking the computer into displaying a fake online account -- so that in August, several hundred German customers were looking at their online bank account and seeing money that wasn't actually there.

Apparently, these fake online accounts aren't static either -- so if you transfer money from one account to another, it'll play along. The only way you won't realize you have no money is if you do banking from an uninfected computer or, say, go to your ATM. I can imagine the screams of horror emitting from some of these poor (literally) customers. I'm pretty sure if it had happened to me, I'd have had a stroke.