New Scareware, ‘fakealert-spypro.gen.ai’

McAfee, the security company has lately uncovered a fresh fake anti-virus program that it calls FakeAlert-SpyPro.gen.ai.

States the company that soon as those behind this malicious software are able to execute it on a target computer, it shows an alert message suggesting that different kinds of malicious programs have infected the system and that to clean them, the user requires clicking the message.

But on doing so, a window pop ups and it triggers a bogus PC scan. Subsequently, it displays several detections along with the warning that the machine of the user is contaminated. However, it then suggests that the malware infections can be cleaned if the user buys and runs the relevant application from the "anti[removed].com" site.

Consequently, when the rogue application is run, it attempts at opening websites from Internet Explorer that essentially contain porn.

McAfee outlines that the rogueware as well alters the Windows registry variously, in order that it is able to load itself whenever the system starts up. In addition, it deactivates the phishing filters included in the Web browser.

Worryingly, the security company's discovery of this fresh FAKEAV once again proves right what its own researchers stated in July 2010. They had said that 'scareware' could be the most expensive Internet fraud for 2010 resulting in widespread computer damage and financial loss to end-users.

They had also pointed out that 'scareware' was one of the most prevalent, complex and dangerous Internet scams that exploited approximately 1m population daily. In fact, the company noted that cyber-criminals, by conning end-users via scareware, reportedly amassed profits of over R2-billion all over the world.

Besides the researchers state that the immense popularity of scareware amongst cyber-criminals is attributed to the fact that crooks don't have to steal account numbers, passwords and such personal information from users during these attacks for making monetary gains.

Notably, by exploiting the fright associated with malware assaults, cyber-criminals victimize purchasers with their bogus AV products. Meanwhile, they're discovering increasing number of methods for reaching onto victims, while especially using social-networking websites that are very popular amidst Web-surfers and also easy to abuse, the researchers comment.

Related article: New Zealand Releases Code To Reduce Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 9/24/2010