Bogus Anti-Virus Software Attacking Firefox Users

Recently, security firm, Sophos identified a new scam. According to the firm, the attack triggers when a window based computer uses Firefox web browser, as reported by ITP on June 14, 2011.

This type of malware programs get onto the computer, present itself as the anti-virus software, and alert users that their system is flooded with viruses and requires being cleaned. As per Sophos, Hackers always tries to infect technology devices and it appears that they are updating them frequently to try and scam people into loading something on their computer, as reported by Techie Insider on June 14, 2011.

According to the security firm Sophos, the bogus antivirus alert page is almost an actual imitation of the real Microsoft Update page with one key exception. When the web page - which is actually an imitation of the real Windows Update page - loads within Firefox, it provides users an 'urgent' 2.8 MB download, which if downloaded will install the bogus antivirus software on the user's computer. This further runs a scan which is created to make the user believe that the bogus antivirus software is really searching for viruses on the computer.

Parallel to the spam messages that have corrected their grammar and make use of proper imagery and CSS, the attackers selling bogus anti-virus are becoming more professional with each passing day. They utilize supreme quality graphics and use information from the UserAgent strings that are dispatched by the browser to modify the malware experience.

Commenting on the matter, Graham Cluley of Sophos stated that, users require being more alert than ever before as fake security pop-up in their browsers, which further downloads malware, as reported by ITP on June 14, 2011. He further added that, bogus anti-virus attacks are becoming a profitable business opportunities for cybercrooks and they are devoting more time and efforts into scamming people.

Nevertheless, this is not the first incidence of attack on Firefox and definitely won't be the concluding one. During the first week of June, Sophos highlighted another scam that cautioned users with bogus security alerts that activate the browser's security messages. It appears that cybercrooks are making use of smart social engineering approaches to scam users into downloading fake software themselves.

Related article: Bugs Swell In Browsers in 2006

» SPAMfighter News - 6/23/2011