Criminals Use More Sophisticated Scareware Technique

According to the "Kaspersky Labs" security experts, malware purveyors or scareware pushers have improved their cheating techniques and made them more advanced/sophisticated then ever before.

Scareware are also known as rogueware or bogus antivirus. These are referred to those fake applications that pose as legitimate products and convince users to make payment. In order to accomplish their task, cyber criminals user scary techniques that involve displaying security alerts informing about the detection of fictitious threats on their machines.

Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered a new scareware variant known as "Security Master AV" that has taken the scary techniques to a new level. The security company has warned that the interface does not only display an online support system, but it is also wholly functional.

Nicolas Brulez, malware Expert at Kaspersky, said that when the user clicked on the support button, he was taken to live chat with fake AV Tech support. It was very difficult to find out whether the answers were given by keyword-operated botnets or real people, but they turned out to be real, as reported by softpedia on July 10, 2010.

The security researchers have learned that cyber criminals also provide technical support via e-mail and telephone. The e-mail method works quite well in case the user does not know English. The live chat prompts the user that he should forward an e-mail in his native language to the given e-mail address to get the technical support in the native language.

In order to convince the user that their program is not a scam, cyber criminals offer a trial version of their program absolutely free that can clear fake threats. The social engineering further extends to new limit, Kaspersky notes.

If the user informs the cyber criminals that they need assistance, they will offer him a 'Free Trial' version of the program that removes infection detected by the first one (i.e. one day version). This second fake program also uses the same "Online support" button, said Kaspersky.

Kaspersky finally states that while communicating with the support system, it discovered that the first rogue AV was a 'Free Scanner' while the trial version was wholly functional product - the important thing was that it worked for one day only.

Related article: Criminals Hack With More Evil Tactics

» SPAMfighter News - 7/21/2010