Fake Anti-viruses Continue as also Remain Unchanged

According to investigators from Zscaler the security company, fake anti-virus software, which gain control over victims' computers followed with demanding a price in return for specific security service, continue to inflict the Internet.

Evidently, the investigators at Zscaler also discovered several of these phony anti-viruses remaining unchanged from the way they functioned some years back. However, as search-engines are often utilized for advertising and distributing the Fake AV programs to end-users, cyber-criminals practically don't require introducing too much alteration to the malware.

It's been found that as high as 95% of all returns on search engines obtained from keywords such as "purchase Microsoft Word" essentially produce compromised websites, which divert consumers onto a URL dropping Fake AV, the investigators at Zscaler emphasize.

They (the investigators) discovered that the URLs, which divert end-users from compromised websites onto malicious anti-virus sites, all have Russian domains as their hosts. These URLs simply require distinguishing authentic Web-browsers from malicious scanners or bots via the use of a JavaScript for creating one cookie followed with interpreting the same. And once such a cookie is restored, it becomes possible for diverting the visitor onto a malevolent website else he's diverted onto Google or Bing.

But, it seems, cyber-crooks are becoming complacent, hence lazy, according to Zscaler.

For, the fake anti-virus websites continue to appear just as they were 2-yrs back, while the sites' source-codes too have hardly changed. Previously, after each 2-3-week interval, the fake anti-virus websites typically showed alternations whilst they were discovered across the highly hunted keywords, but currently they're found the same for as many as 6 months.

Remarking about this issue, Zscaler Inc.'s Senior Security Researcher and Release Manager stated that expectedly, Google would, one day, sanitize the search returns associated with purchasing software programs like it did for those searches that were most popular. Zscaler.com published this on February 28, 2012.

And till the time Google undertook the above action, numerous Web-surfers would end up landing onto bogus retail sites like fake anti-virus web-pages. However, this could be avoided if users deployed the most recent AV applications onto their PCs, the researchers eventually stated.

Related article: Fake Spam Mail Announces Australian PM’s Heart Attack

» SPAMfighter News - 3/6/2012