AMMAN - Internet users should be vigilant against "scareware", a trick cyber scammers have used increasingly over the past few years, according to McAfee, a supplier of network security solutions.
Scareware tricks Internet users into believing that their computer is infected with a virus, prompting them to purchase fake antivirus or anti-spyware software to fix the problem, McAfee said.
When the scareware is installed on a certain computer, it infects it with malware (malicious software), allowing cyber criminals to obtain credit card data, according to McAfee, which identified the 12 most frequently encountered fake alerts used by cyber criminals to access personal information stored on computers.
"These fake alerts are mostly encountered when visiting sites but it is also common for botnet owners to install them on the victim's computer as a way to generate money," Toralv Dirro, security strategist at the anti-virus firm McAfee, said in a recent e-mail interview with The Jordan Times.
When visiting a site the user is confronted with an animation that looks like a virus scanner or a system tool that appears to scan the computer and find lots of malware, tricking the user into installing a programme to fix them, he noted.
When a botnet (a network of private computers infected with malicious software) owner infects his victims' machines, the installation is done via a botnet Trojan, Dirro explained.
This first component repeatedly alerts the user about problems, and to fix them the user has to buy the "full version" of the fake alert tool, which stops the first component from alerting and displays "all is clean" messages that effectively do nothing, he added.
"So to protect himself a user should not let himself get tricked into installing the first part, or remove it with a virus scanner," he said.
Of the 150,000 dangerous links detected between March 2009 and May 2010, 23 per cent were designed for distributing scareware, McAfee said on its website.
"The harm done is the money a user effectively paid for nothing. Usually these fake alert tools don't download additional malware. However they frequently render an existing virus scanner useless or cause the system to become unstable," Dirro said.
Such tricks mostly affect individuals and small companies, because employees of bigger companies are unlikely to pay with their own credit card for software to run on a corporate PC, he noted.
Scareware has become such a big business for cyber crooks that they are now creating elaborate business operations to propagate their scams, such as setting up multinational corporations, frequently changing names and web addresses, and even offering customer support hotlines to deceive victims, according to McAfee.Most common fake alerts
AntiVirus Scan
Anti Vira AV
System Tool
Smart Internet Protection 2011
Fast Disk
Good Memory
Disk Optimiser
AVG AntiVirus
Palladium Pro
Windows System Optimiser
Windows Security and Control
Windows Utility Tool.
Tips to avoid becoming a scareware victim:
© Jordan Times 2011
