McAfee Exposes New Roughware “Malware Doctor”

Security experts at McAfee claim that they have detected new phony anti-malware software called "Malware Doctor" making rounds in the Internet world. The fake software has been renamed as FakeAlert-D Trojan.

The rogueware purportedly comes from compromised sites has been especially developed by malware creators to scare away netizens. According to security experts, if installed on a system, this rogueware performs a complete system scan.

Meanwhile, users report of receiving a message stating that this unregistered version of the roughware "Malware Doctor" will be inefficient in healing or removing malware-infected files from the computer systems of the user and thus, urging him/her to get it activated at a fized cost.

Most importantly, unlike majority of rogueware displaying fake alerts repeatedly, malware Doctor's recent version demonstrates only a few detections. Thus, user does not suspect the software very much. On discovering a malicious file, the Trojan pops-up message that makes it appear legitimate to the user.

Indeed, McAfee says that this rogueware even abuses McAfee's name by making use of the firm's "malware naming convention" while showing fake virus detections. The security firm believes that the viruses' information displayed by the Trojan has been taken from its Virus Information Library.

McAfee points out another unique feature of the Trojan that it continuously sifts the authentic website compromised by it. As of June 5, 2009, the malware hosting site was detected of using some other anti-virus vendor's malware list.

McAfee believes that all these tactics are being employed by malware distributors in order to verify to the user that his computer is infected by a malware in reality and thus, he should get rid of that infection vector by buying "Malware Doctor".

Apart from this, one more feature discovered is the similarity between FakeAlert-D and its precursor FakeAlert-CO. Both of these cast an error alert on the user's system, stating that files on his PC are infected and to get them all right, he should activate the rogue anti-malware software.

Thus, it is recommended if users had run that malicious software on their PCs, they should fully scan their systems with some reliable anti-virus software.

Related article: McAfee Alerts Windows about Accessibility Hole in Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 6/10/2009