Miscreants Riding on DTS Searches, Spreading Scareware

Security researchers of Vietnam-based antivirus purveyor, Bach Khoa Internet Security (BKIS) alarms users that search aimed at Daylight Time Saving (DST) may redirect them to FAKEAV sites.

Also referred as summer's time, DST pertains to advance the clock by 60 minutes so as to stretch daylight during afternoon. Not much regions of the world practice this concept; it is particularly done by regions located at high latitudes.

BKIS warns that assuming the users will browse the Internet to search for information associated with current year's DST (2010) in order to adjust their clocks accordingly, cyber crooks have employed Blackhat SEO (BHSEO) technique to add malicious links to search results, as reported by Bkis Security Blog on March 15, 2010.

Users will definitely be targeted if they type in "Day light Savings 2010" in the search box as keywords.

Bkis' experts also said that susceptible users who clicked malicious links displayed as the result of the aforementioned keywords will land into phony websites having forged Window interface. These websites display virus alerts on user's system which are actually harmless.

The main intention of this software lies in scaring users to purchase a license which has no worth, while endangering the credit card information during the process. Also termed as rogue security software, Scareware is a latest class of malware that acts as a gentleman in the battle against worms and viruses, said experts.

Moreover, this most recent scam spotted by Bkis appears to prove the point that McAfee, a security firm, made, right. In a recent report, McAfee claimed that the most expensive scam in 2010 will be the fake antivirus or scareware scam. Cyber goons earn over $ 300 Million via scareware scams, the report revealed.

To conclude, security experts from security purveyors Websense and Trend Micro independently alarm the users of similar schemes wherein Corey Haim's death was targeted, which occurred in the second week of March 2010. Corey was a former teen idol and a Canadian actor. Deaths of celebrities have unfortunately become common themes for cyber felons to execute BHSEO campaigns because they easily attract Internet users' attention.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/23/2010