I have found one of the more pertinacious menaces of 2010 was “fake antivirus, commonly titled “scareware” or “rogueware.” This is a widespread practice for software to manipulate victim’s to install the closely resembling software and security solutions on their machines.
The computer user will receive a warning of system infection by a nasty malware and the only way to get rid of it is to pay for a “full” version of the software. It is of course paying money to the bad guys as it offers no protection against threats. In a lot of cases, we find not much threat but in many cases they are installing additional malware and gaining access to credit card info.
If you think about it, handing over data so easily, CyberCrooks can access you bank account, take money out or steal your identity. These scams are clearly successful for those who reproduce these rogue products; study shows half a million fake antivirus software variants were encountered.
Along with the fear/response trick of the scam itself, numerous methods are used to get malicious software onto victims’ machines. Some are direct methods such as warning pop-ups activated by visiting malicious or compromised webpages, and other methods span to more generic social engineering techniques used to convince recipients of spammed emails to open malicious attachments.
I would suggest the first steps to combat these fake antivirus threats is user education, but even the most informed attempts to fight back are often delayed by unwise activities from legitimate websites and service providers. For example, a very real campaign run by U.S. Internet Service Provider, Comcast, warned users of suspected botnet infections. Still, this threat was near impossible to distinguish from a fake antivirus alert.
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