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‘Privacy Center’ - New Rogue Antivirus Abusing Microsoft Name

As per the software giant Microsoft, news of rogue security programs have been quite rampant in recent months. Microsoft researchers have found one such kind of rogue anti-viruses- 'Privacy Center.'

These are programs that produce deceptive alerts and forged detections to persuade users to buy unauthentic or illegitimate security solution. Some of these programs may show logos or product names in an apparent and illegal attempt to mimic Microsoft products.

Patrick Nolan, Technology Specialist, Microsoft Malware Protection Center, exclaimed in a statement that the makers of rogue security applications have become so intelligent that they insert a Microsoft link to dupe users into believing that the imitation is a real product of the Company (Microsoft). Trojan:Win32/PrivacyCenter is a family of programs that claim to detect malware and show fraudulent alerts of "dangerous programs and viruses," as per the news by SOFTPEDIA on December 21, 2009.

Then, the malware sellers ask the user that he should pay to register the software for removing the non-existent threats from the system.

Microsoft claims that it has got reports that this Trojan has circulated through poisoned search results where users are taken to websites that show phony scanners. In addition, Microsoft has got reports that this Trojan has also circulated disguising as a bogus video codec.

The security experts state in a statement that the creators of rogue security software hesitate in imitating the design and branding of authentic security programs to dodge their forged antivirus code as legitimate offerings like in the present case. Obviously, it is just one of the features of social engineering methods designed to deceive end users into paying for non-existent security.

Furthermore, this new attack come along with the scareware package attack that tried to sell phony antivirus program to its victims using an obvious support of the software, as reported by Microsoft in the second week of December 2009. As per the security experts, such trojans have been present for several years and are among the "cash cows" for cyber attackers.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

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