New Malvertising Campaign Uses BSOD to Scam Internauts - Malwarebytes

Security firm Malwarebytes recently said that a new malvertising campaign employs the notorious Microsoft Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) to scam users into disclosing their identity and handing over their money.

BSOD is being used by the group to reel in prospective victims as a social engineering strategy. The security firm found that attackers command on popular phrases through Google's AdWords advertising service including YouTube as keyword to showcase their adverts at the pinnacle of the search engine. The link is supposed to go to the selected YouTube URL but in its place, a click on this advert takes you to a web page that's convincing and loaded with the BSOD image.

While some Internauts will not be tricked but many naïve technology users might be.

Infosecurity published an analysis of Jerome Segura, a Researcher with Malwarebytes Lab, on 29th September, 2015, quoting "Users are directed to call a toll-free "helpline" to determine the BSOD on the page as a part of a tech support scam. It was "quite possibly the first documented tech support scam BSOD linked to Google AdWords which is the largest online advertising service of the tech giant."

Victims who ended up saying that the bogus support number could have been deceived of anywhere from $200 to $600 for unnecessary support packages. The criminals frequently committed identity theft also and tried to drain bank accounts of victims.

Segura added: "Many times, these rogue advertisers will exploit genuine brands to trick people and provide services on behalf of these companies. Beyond infringement laws of copyright, there is also social engineering aspect present which follows always to cheat people into spending hundreds of dollars without any good reason."

Malwarebytes reported the campaign to Google and the fake ads were withdrawn immediately but it is a good reminder to be always vigilant even when a link looks genuine.

Moreover, this is not the only malvertising campaign which has been going on recently as the well-known porn website xHamster was the latest victim of a massive malvertising campaign which has been going on since middle of August which also targeted other websites such as eBay, MSN, eHow, Yahoo, Wowhead and Answers.com.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/6/2015