PandaLabs Identifies Impersonated Panda Cloud Antivirus

Security investigators at PandaLabs the security company report of malicious software, which mimics the company's Panda Cloud Antivirus and whose icon nearly exactly resembles the actual AV.

The investigators also report that this bogus Panda Cloud Antivirus conceals one highly destructive Trojan namely DarkAngle that's been created for filching sensitive information, particularly Internet banking credentials and passwords.

Actually, when the Trojan is run, it intercepts each and every keystroke of the victim so it may transmit all the information back to its central C&C (command-and-control) infrastructure. What's more, the malware repeatedly becomes active on every rebooting of the computer and thereby harvests the maximum possible data.

Amazingly, numerous symptoms appear for DarkAngle's contamination on the victimized computer.

One, the Trojan will continuously divert the user's online connection as well as falsely indicate about unsafe browsing operations on the system. It will tell that the user's PC is running sluggishly, which actually happens because of the Trojan itself. The operations that get affected are starting up, doing Web-surfing, playing games, and shutting down.

Two, Web-searches get diverted alternatively the user's desktop along with home-page configurations get altered. This is an indication about an extremely grave DarkAngle contamination. Three, the Trojan deactivates the real anti-virus as also anti-spyware applications running on the contaminated system. Over and above, pop-ups keep erupting. These pop-ups may be the most unexpected advertisements that appear when DarkAngle contaminates the user's 'registry' as well as utilizes it for the said pop-ups.

Now, PandaLabs' researchers observe that removing DarkAngle manually can be unwieldy, while it doesn't every time guarantee total removal as a few files maybe concealed alternatively could mechanically reanimate themselves after sometime. So the security company recommends its Automatic spyware elimination program since it's a secured as well as convenient technique for malware removal.

Eventually, Panda Cloud Antivirus, which has millions of end-users depending on it for safeguarding personal computers, is popular AV software. And it's just this popularity of the program that cyber-criminals are attempting at capitalizing on for disseminating their wares. In fact, such a con isn't something new and neither does it mean a stop forever.

Related article: PandaLabs Discusses A Trojan and Two Worms in its Weekly Malware Report

» SPAMfighter News - 10/12/2012