New Variant of Malware Concealed as McAfee VirusScan Trial

Security firm Sophos has recently warned netizens to be cautious of fake antivirus software that pretends itself as a free 30-day trial of McAfee VirusScan Plus.

Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, said that the company's spam traps seized a wave of malicious emails that alleged to offer the virtual McAfee trial. Instead, it delivered malicious cargo naming as Mal/FakeAV-El, as reported by Tom's Guide on July 28, 2010.

The e-mail says: "Download a FREE 30-day Trial of MCAfee VirusScan Plus and Be Automaticaly Entered to Win. Installation file attached". The file attached with the mail is a setup.zip.

According to the security experts at McAfee, users might have observed that both "MCAfee" and "Automaticaly" were not spelled correctly in the mail. Another noticeable point was the attachment, as McAfee didn't send setup files for their products as e-mail attachments.

McAfee also identified this fake anti-virus spyware as a new variant of the Bredolab Trojan.

Graham Cluley also said that the bogus anti-virus software (also known as scareware or rogue anti-virus) continued to be a major problem, according to the researcher's blog published by SOPHOS on July 28, 2010.

He further stated that malicious hackers made programs that act as genuine anti-virus products, but were actually created to panic users into believing that there were some serious security problems with their systems (hoping that they would pay for computer's cure).

Microsoft stated that its free Malicious Software Removal Tool removed scareware off 7.8 Million PCs in the second half of 2009 as compared to the 5.3 Million in the first half. The AntiPhishing Group acknowledged an increase of 583% in scareware programs in the first six months of 2009.

According to the security experts, the best way to stay safe from the problems originating from bogus anti-virus software is to ignore these types of e-mails. In order to reduce the risk of installing anti-virus software into the machines, users are recommended to install real anti-virus software.

For this particular case, researchers have suggested that if anybody wishes to try McAfee VirusScan, he should download it from the McAfee's website. Users are advised not to trust such type of unsolicited e-mails.

Related article: New Zealand Releases Code To Reduce Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 8/10/2010