Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 7 Sep 2008 10:06 am |
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The program you are referring to, XP Antivirus 2008, is known by various names, including Vista Antivirus 2008/2009. It is part of a family of fake security products delivered by "drive-by" downloads, or trickery. There is a huge surge in the dispersion of these programs during this quarter.
What is fake anti virus?
Fake anti virus/spyware programs. also known in the "biz" as "rogue security alerts," is a application that once installed either modifies your desktop wallpaper, or adds an icon (often a gold shield like Windows Updates uses) to your System Tray area. It then displays security alert "balloon" messages telling you that certain types of spyware, or x number of viruses, or security threats have been detected on your computer. These alerts are meant to scare you into following through on the recommended solution. You are then offered a link or URL to visit to download the "recommended" removal program. In order to download this program you must first pay anywhere from $29.95 to $49.95 USD. Once paid for, when the application runs a scan it removes all of the previously mentioned threats.
What you don't realize is that these removed threats were probably never present on your computer in the first place. They are part of a script that is included with the malware and is changed from time to time. This is pure fraud and extortion.
Criminals use these programs to raise quick cash, to fund their illegal activities, or to bribe government officials in their localities. This allows them to continue doing business ripping us off with phishing scams, bot-netting our computers, or launching denial of service attacks against governments or security websites that they disagree with.
If you discover such a security alert icon in your System Tray, or in modified desktop wallpaper, assume you are infected and either download, install, update, immunize and scan with the always free Spybot Search and Destroy, SuperAntiSpyware, or free online anti-spyware scanner like Trend Micro's Housecall, or purchase a commercial security solution. The top commercial anti spyware apps include Webroot Spy Sweeper, PC Tools Spyware Doctor, Trend Micro PC-cillin, Symantec Norton AntiVirus with AntiSpyware, McAfee Anti Virus + Anti Spyware, Eset Nod32 and MalwareBytes Anti-Malware. There are links to these programs on Wiz's Security Blog and my website in general.
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"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog
Last edited by Wiz Feinberg on 17 Sep 2008 9:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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