Scareware Scammers Hijack Twitter Trending Topics

Security researchers are reporting on an ongoing scareware serving campaign abusing the popular micro-blogging service Twitter. Hundreds of tweets using four different URL shortening services are currently spammed through the automatically registered Twitter accounts, relying on a pseudo-random...

A Peek at the 'Bahama' Click Fraud Botnet

A new botnet, codenamed the ‘Bahama’ botnet has been linked to the recent surge in click-fraud and scareware attacks. This video by researchers at Click Forensics shows the Bahama Botnet in action. More on this botnet in this report...

Rogue Advertisement Pushes Scareware to NYTimes.com Readers

For about 24 hours over the weekend, The New York Times site was serving up fake security software scareware. In a message posted to Twitter and a note on its NYTimes.com site, the newspaper blamed a rogue advertisement for the malware blast: Some nasty ads have hit the Web browsers of visitors t...

NYTimes Scareware Attack Shows Weakness of Ad Networks

Media sites, including the New York Times, have become the latest targets of attackers who make their living by poisoning online ads and redirecting unsuspecting visitors to malicious Web pages or trying to trick them into downloading malware. Over the weekend attackers were able to buy ads on th...

The Ultimate Guide to Scareware Protection

Throughout the last two years, scareware fake security software, quickly emerged as the single most profitable monetization strategy for cybercriminals to take advantage of. Due to the aggressive advertising practices applied by the cybercrime gangs, thousands of users fall victim to the scam on ...

How to Avoid Scareware Attacks

From Just Ask Gemalto Dennis Fisher Computer users have been conditioned over the last few years to recognize and avoid many of the more common scams and threats on the Internet: email viruses, phishing, spam, Nigerian 419 ploys and work-at-home money-mule schemes. You know that an email promisin...

Threatpost News Wrap #2: Drive-by malware, Twitter attacks

Threatpost editors Ryan Naraine and Dennis Fisher look at the latest security news headlines and dig deeper into the latest wave of drive-by download infections and scareware attacks on Twitter. Download SHOW NOTES Cybercriminals hijack Twitter trending topics to serve malware Subscribe to the Ne...

Scammers use Ford to drive users to scareware

From The Register John Leyden Scareware scammers are trying to game search engines into promoting crudware sites when a surfer searches for information on Ford cars. The Ford scareware campaign pandasecurity.com features around one million links, all targeting the Ford Motor Company, designed to...

Scareware pops up at FoxNews.com

From ZDNet Zero Day Dancho Danchev There have been numerous reports from affected users that a scareware fake anti-virus programs have been poping-up at FoxNews.com during the last couple of days, through a malvertising campaign. This most recent case of malvertising once again demonstrates that...

Conficker virus and the 'scareware' link

Ryan Naraine on KGO AM 810 Newstalk Radio – April 10, 2009 Ed and Jen from San Francisco’s KGO talk radio talk again with Threatpost editor Ryan Naraine. It looks like Conficker is stirring to life after doing absolutely nothing on April 1 and Ryan says it’s linked to “scareware programs” that po...

Conficker business model: Scareware and spam

The Conficker botnet has started to use its peer-to-peer communication system to update itself and download scareware fake anti-virus programs to millions of infected Windows machines, according to malware hunters tracking the threat. The latest Conficker mutant comes a week after a heavily-hyped...

New ransomware holds Windows files hostage, demands $50

By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Cybercrooks have hit on a new twist to their aggressive marketing of fake security software, and are duping users into downloading a file utility computerworld.com that holds users’ data for ransom, security researchers warned today. While so-called “scareware” has...