Fraudulent Press Release by Cyber Crooks

Security experts warms against a group of cyber criminals who are taking advantage of the legal press release services to gain popularity for their fake anti-virus program, which they disperse. The scam is also exploiting people's information regarding the Zeus banking Trojan, as reported by Softpedia on 31st July, 2010.

As per the report by Sunbelt Software (an antivirus vendor), the rogueware promoted by the uncommon move is known as Shield EC Antivirus. The fraudulent press release was put up on the Press-Release.com (FPR), a famous press release dispersal service, which has been around for a long time.

To make their product look totally authentic, the cyber crooks are trying to take advantage of the scandalous Zeus banking Trojan. The press release states that, the latest software is quite efficient in handling the banking trojans and viruses, even the infamous Zeus.

It was also claimed that Shield EC Antivirus has been discovered after a research of two years, by Martindale Enterprise and the Zeus Tracker (an authentic project which detects Zeus C&C servers) and related botnet action. The scareware further claims of having a strong user base of 4000,000, which is not true.

According to Sunbelt's reaearch, the concern 'Martindale Enterprise' is not present. The security experts further tried to detect "Kseniya Vasilyeva" (a type of public profile), the representative of Martindale Enterprises Limited, however they could not get anything appropriate.

The other interesting and doubtful feature of the website is that, it was enlisted in Cyprus, on 25th July, 2010. Again, the 'English' language used in the press release was not proper.
The cybercriminals releasing the fraudulent antivirus are placing shops with a desire to be present for some time. They are distributing the real malicious code with the help of a fast changing network, which is difficult to detect. They also have provided a fake web page of their concern.

Additionally, they are trying to push the fake product to possible victims, via earning4u.com (formerly IframeDollars.biz) - an infamous Russian malware distributing related network.

Hence, it is being advised by the security researchers to be careful, and to never believe the rogue product. They also suggests the users to install required security software, to make their PC secure from such attacks.

Related article: Fraudulent Warning to Customers of Halifax

» SPAMfighter News - 8/11/2010