Malware makers target Windows 8 – Fake AV and phising
While Windows 8 isn’t out for a week yet, malware makers are trying to ride the wave of publicity Microsoft’s latest OS gets. Anti-virus company TrendMicro has posted two security threats on their blog that specifically target Windows 8. One is a fake anti-virus dialog that is shown when visiting malicious websites and which shows fake virus results. Of course the scammers urge you to install their paid software to get rid of the viruses. Many users get afraid of the warning and actually will, like they also did on other Windows versions.
It’s clear that this fake anti-virus is specifically made to target Windows 8 users as the dialog says: ‘Win 8 Security System’ .
The other one is a phishing mail that tries to lure you to a website where you can download Windows 8 for free. And instead of the actual download the scammers ask for personal details such as an e-mail address and name that can be sold on the underground market for cyber-criminals.
There are 3 comments
- MyCE Senior Member
- Posted on: 02 Nov 12 01:44
Fortunately, Windows 8 comes with a complete security solution built-in. Also, many manufactures and retailers like to bundle a trial version of some security suite, like McAfee, or Norton.
- MyCE Die Hard
- Posted on: 02 Nov 12 13:49
Like Mina inviting in Count Dracula - once she lets him in, it's all over.
Many AVs use their own proper names in the Active Window Title Bar. So, if I've got AVG Anti-Virus installed, I'll see virus-alerts with "AVG AntiVirus" printed in the active-windows title bar. If I see something else, then I know it's a fake alert.
Microsoft's Windows Defender and Security Essentials didn't use those exact spellings on their true alerts. Not in the past. Maybe their Win8 programmers discovered "precision" and "correctness" to be useful.
Or maybe not. We'll see.
The Bleeping Computer has a huge array of hijacker names that have been used, and almost all of them are worthy of tricking more than a few users in their web.
I'm not sure how an OS can defeat these hijackers when the nonchalant user is tricked into 'letting them in' but it seems like an OS should be able to detect changes to its core components and offer some solution. Unfortunately, that will always result in some UserID agreeing to the changes - and if that's the HiJacker User, well, then...
"Come right in."
(I have laughed at the several articles in the past month talking about Win8's "security" and "invulnerabiliteis", and especially, "the lack of virus attacks." Yeah. Riiiight. Before Day One. Uh huh. Next summer, we'll see "Win8 has more Virus Attacks than Win7" articles. Meanwhile, Win98-SE will be among the least-attacked Win OS's. du-uh.
- New Member
- Posted on: 02 Nov 12 15:17
You have a complementary article on Teckweek :
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