Saturday, November 6, 2010

Fake MS Security Essentials – User Beware!

Microsoft’s Windows Security Blog reports in great detail about a fake rogue program posturing to be Microsoft Security Essentials. Here is a short excerpt from MS’s Security Blog:

This imposter is known in the technical world of antimalware combat as “Win32/FakePAV”. FakePAV is a rogue that displays messages that imitate Microsoft Security Essentials threat reports in order to entice the user into downloading and paying for a rogue security scanner. The rogue persistently terminates numerous processes such as Windows Registry Editor, Internet Explorer, Windows Restore and other utilities and applications.

This fake software is distributed by a tactic commonly described as a “drive-by download” and shows up as a hotfix.exe or as an mstsc.exe file. Additionally, after the fake Microsoft Security Essentials software reports it cannot clean the claimed malware infection, it offers to install additional antimalware rogues (with names such as AntiSpySafeguard, Major Defense Kit, Peak Protection, Pest Detector and Red Cross). Lastly, this fake program will try to scare you into purchasing a product.

The skinny of it is this: Don’t be fooled! Microsoft Security Essentials is free and will never ask you to download additional programs. It updates itself automatically or you update it by using Windows Update.

If something asks for money in direct or indirect connection with Security Essentials it is fake!

For me personally the “good side” of it all is that this happens to be one of the rogue infections that are relatively easy to remove, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Stay safe.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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