Scareware Thrives Despite Innovative Marketing Bust

Scareware has become such an indomitable economic force that the take down of perhaps the largest, most vertically-integrated scareware purveyor, Innovative Marketing, has had a negligible deterrent effect. Read the full article. The Last Watchdog...

SMS Blockers: The New Face of Ransomware

LIMASSOL, CYPRUS–The scareware and rogue anti-virus epidemic that has been earning attackers millions of dollars for the last few years has spawned a devious new offspring: SMS blockers. This class of malware, which demands that users send SMS text messages to premium numbers, has recently taken...

Fake AV Work For Hire on Freelancer.com

A scareware purveyor has brazenly advertised for recruits on a mainstream job market website. A job ad on Freelancer.com offers work for a coder prepared to turn his hand to the creation of fake anti-virus website redirection scripts. Read the full article. The Register...

Researchers Do Deep Dive on SEO Poison Kits

The techniques used by unloveable rogues who automate search engine manipulation attacks themed around breaking news to sling scareware have been unpicked by new research. Read the full article. The Register...

Win Update Scareware Pushes Drive-By Downloads

Cybercriminals are using a fake Windows Update installation dialogue box to sell a bogus security product called Anti-malware Defender, security researchers have warned. Read the full article. Computer Weekly...

An Inside Look at the Aurora Scareware Tactic

Some of the malware families that were part of the Operation Aurora attacks that targeted dozens of major U.S. companies are being installed through fake antivirus and scareware attacks, researchers say. Researchers at Damballa, which did an in-depth report on the Aurora attacks, found that the...

Search Engine Poisoning Is On the Rise

To improve the chances of installing their malware on random computers, scareware peddlers have decided to set up more that 60 websites that contain hundreds of possible search matches for hot, trending topics. Read the full article. Help Net Security...

Killer Whale Trainer Death Exploited by Malware

Supposed footage of Wednesday’s fatal Sea World killer whale attack in Florida actually points at sites distributing scareware. Read the full article. The Register...

Scareware Found In 'Unknown Facebook App'

Scareware scammers are taking advantage of rumors about an “unnamed app” that supposedly poses a security risk to Facebook users in order to trick users into sites slinging rogue security software packages. Read the full article. The Register...

Scareware Nearly Exact Copies of Real AV Now

Rogue antivirus applications have been a serious threat to users for some time now, but the level of sophistication of these attacks has gone up several levels recently, as attackers have learned to copy exactly the GUI and virtually every feature of authentic AV programs. An analysis of the rece...

Windows Users Targeted in Anti-Malware Scam

A rogue anti-malware product called DefenceLab redirects infected PCs to Microsoft’s Support portal, but modifies the HTML content as it returns so as to appear as if Microsoft is endorsing the worthless software. Read the full article. The Register...

Twilight Movie Fans Targeted in Scareware, Viruses

A viral marketing campaign designed to exploit your anticipation over the New Moon movie coming out tomorrow may look like normal free media you’ve come to expect on the Internet. A scareware purveyor has been spreading bad URLs, with the help of corrupted Google search results, having to do with...

A Look Deep Inside the Scareware Epidemic

Kaspersky Lab malware analyst Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky has written an in-depth article describing the scareware fake anti-virus epidemic. The article touches on the common distribution techniques, the tricks used to scare users into paying fraudsters for a removal tool and the way code generators...

SEO Scareware Campaign Compromises 200K Websites

Security researchers have detected a massive blackhat SEO search engine optimization campaign consisting of over 200,000 compromised web sites, all redirecting to fake security software Inst58s6.exe, commonly referred to as scareware. The massive blackat SEO campaign has been launched by the same...

Worms and Scareware Attacks on the Rise

Microsoft today released its biannual Security Intelligence Report which demonstrates some surprising conclusions about how the threat landscape is impacting enterprise networks. For example, the number of rogue security software infections, which experienced a high-profile scourge earlier this...

Scareware Launched From Gizmodo Blog

Visitors to technology blog Gizmodo are being warned that they could have picked up more than tips about the latest must-have gadget. A statement on the Gizmodo website admits that it was tricked into running Suzuki adverts which were in fact from hackers. Read the full story BBC News...

Scareware Locks Apps on Infected PCs

USA Today is reporting on a new variant of scareware that not only inundates users with exhortations to purchase phony antivirus software called “Total Security 2009,” but that also locks users out of nearly all applications until they purchase the disreputable product. Once their PCs are infecte...

Fake Conficker Alert Drops Scareware Threat

An ongoing spam campaign is once again attempting to impersonate Microsoft’s security team by mass mailing Conficker.B Infection Alerts that drop a sample of the Antivirus Pro 2010 scareware scam. Here’s a sample of what the text looks like: “Dear Microsoft Customer, Starting 18/10/2009 the...

Report: Phishing and Scareware on The Rise

According to a report by the Anti-Phishing Working Group APWG, the number of phishing incidents and rogue anti-malware programs also known as scareware are rising at an “unprecedented rate”. The APWG says that around four fifths of the phishing attack websites claim to offer payment and financial...

Microsoft Takes Aim at Malvertising Threat

Less than a week after a malicious advertising attack against the New York Times ad servers, Microsoft filed five civil lawsuits against companies allegedly using online advertising to serve malware. The lawsuits allege that individuals using the business names “Soft Solutions,” “Direct Ad,”...