Phony anti-virus scam keeps growing
I have posted several times about the scam called “scareware”. Malware masquerading as anti-malware fools you into installing a Trojan. The problem keeps growing and is a serious threat for untutored PC users. Recently, a relative of mine was fooled into believing that she had a virus by one of the phony pop-ups that are the trademark of this scam and she made the mistake of clicking on the link. The stuff is nasty; it erased her AVG anti-malware program and made her PC inoperable. It kept demanding that she pay for some bogus security software. It took a lot of effort from a computer repair service to clean the system up.
Reuters reports on a Symantec study:
Tens of millions of U.S. computers are loaded with scam security software that their owners may have paid for but which only makes the machines more vulnerable, according to a new Symantec report on cybercrime.
Cyberthieves are increasingly planting fake security alerts that pop up when computer users access a legitimate website. The “alert” warns them of a virus and offers security software, sometimes for free and sometimes for a fee.
“Lots of times, in fact they’re a conduit for attackers to take over your machine,” said Vincent Weafer, Symantec’s vice president for security response.
The number of infections that Symantec reports is a measure of the severity of the problem:
Symantec found 250 varieties of scam security software with legitimate sounding names like Antivirus 2010 and SpywareGuard 2008, and about 43 million attempted downloads in one year but did not know how many of the attempted downloads succeeded, said Weafer.
“In terms of the number of people who potentially have this in their machines, it’s tens of millions,” Weafer said
Be very wary of pop-ups that claim you have a virus infection. Learn what legitimate warnings from your actual anti-malware software look like. Here’s a previous post about malware pop-ups.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.