Facebook Members Become Target of FAKEAV Scam

Researchers from CA a security company caution users of Facebook that a scareware scam is presently attacking them i.e. delivering fake anti-virus software through spam mails.

Further according to the researchers, the malicious junk e-mail states that there's a surprise for the recipient as it displays a web-link that leads onto a site on blogspot.com. This site reportedly resembles Facebook, including the ads displayed in their original location.

Actually, the ploy is to make users think that they're surfing on Facebook.

Moreover, the rogue web-page displays an image of a gift accompanied with a message, which tells the friend (reader of the message) that if he's on the site, then somebody from his friends list is about to give him a surprise.

However, if any part of the page is clicked, users get to download surprise.exe, which's an executable file that as per Security Researcher Akhil Menon of CA is one Trojan downloader that additionally loads scareware onto the contaminated computer. Softpedia.com published this on January 18, 2011.

Furthermore according to Menon, CA researchers have detected the malware as Win32/FakeAV, which's a Trojan variant. In case anyone runs the file on his computer, it'll pull down fake security software that'll falsely tell him that there are infections on his system. Besides, this kind of software is well-known for pressurizing users for buying its rogue full version too, Menon outlines, while writing on the company's blog. Community.ca.com published this on January 18, 2011.

Sadly, it's because of the aforementioned kind of scareware campaigns that there has been an increase in scareware, CA investigators note, just as Panda Security highlights through its data published during November 2010. In that Panda reveals that rogue anti-virus campaigns at that time accounted for as much as 12% of the total malicious software that were identified. It also stated that in spite of rogue anti-virus campaigns prevailing for no less than 3-years, cyber-criminals developed 40% of them during 2010 alone, suggesting their excessive popularity among the criminals.

Hence, for steering clear of scareware scams, users are recommended that they must always keep their anti-virus software up-to-date on their systems.

Related article: Facebook Users Should be Careful of a Computer Virus

» SPAMfighter News - 1/26/2011