fakealert « Webroot Threat Blog

’30 Rock’ Phrase ‘Circulus et Pruna’ Draws Fakealerts

March 30, 2010 – 1:04 pm

Every search result on the first page (and most of the second page) of results for “circulus et pruna” leads to a Fakealert trap.

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Blackhat SEO, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: 30 Rock, Alec Baldwin, circulus, Circulus et Pruna, fakealert, hd_codec.exe, Love lines, packupdate_build, pruna, rogue antivirus, rogue security product, security tool, Silver Panther | Comments (2)

Fakealerts Invade Google Image Search Results for ’24′ Star

January 27, 2010 – 5:10 pm

By Andrew Brandt Searchers beware: Those photos of celebrities or funny cat pictures that turn up in your Google image search results might not be photos at all, but fake antivirus alerts. Evidence appears to indicate that a similar scam to one we blogged about last November may be working its way up the Google [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Blackhat SEO, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks | Tags: 24, Annie Wersching, fake antivirus, fakealert, Rogue Security Products, security tool, Spyware.IEMonster, total security, what a tool | Comments (8)

Fakealerts: Building a Better Mousetrap

November 25, 2009 – 10:48 am

By Andrew Brandt In general, the use of fakealerts – those bogus warnings that look like your PC has started some sort of antivirus scan on its own, then predict imminent doom if you don’t buy some snake oil product right this minute — is on the rise. Fakealerts constitute a particularly effective social engineering [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in adware, Blackhat SEO, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: fakealert, rogue antivirus, sabotch, Adware-Sabotch, rogue security product, antivirus 2010, Windows Web Security, Trojan-Downloader-Dermo | Comments (7)

Rogues Mug Big Bird on his Birthday

November 4, 2009 – 12:48 pm

By Andrew Brandt In a move sure to raise the ire of Sesame Street fans everywhere, the black hat SEO gangs that have been manipulating Google results for the better part of the year have seized on a new target from which they’ve launched their current salvo of rogue antivirus guano. That’s right, the lovable, [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in adware, Blackhat SEO, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks | Tags: Big Bird, Big Bird on Google, Big Bird's Birthday, fakealert, Internet Antivirus Pro, rogue security product, Trojan-IM.Win32.Faker, Trojan.PSW.BAT.Cunter, Virus.Win32.Faker | Comments (1)

Roman Polanski Arrest Spawns Headline-Hooking Rogues

September 28, 2009 – 10:28 am

By Andrew Brandt and Brenden Vaughan As we’ve seen for the past several months, a celebrity ended up the top news story, which started a cascade of malware distributors racing to get their driveby pages to the top of search results. Today’s victim/subject is Roman Polanski, the renowned film director arrested on decades old charges [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Blackhat SEO, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks | Tags: anti-antivirus 2010, fakealert, fakewall, fantivirus, rogue, roman polanski, samantha geimer, samantha geimer pictures, search-gala.com, Windows PC Defender | Comments (1)

One Click, and the Exploit Kit’s Got You

September 18, 2009 – 10:37 am

By Andrew Brandt After all the brouhaha surrounding the NYTimes.com website hosting ads which spawned rogue antivirus Fakealerts last weekend, I spent a considerable amount of time looking at so-called exploit kits this week. These are packages, made up of custom made Web pages (typically coded in the PHP scripting language), which perform a linchpin [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Blackhat SEO, Firefox, Keyloggers, Phishing Trojans, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: adobe flash, adobe reader, exploit kit, fakealert, Liberty Exploit, nytimes.com, rogue antivirus, vulnerabilities | Comments (4)

Rogues Impersonate Google, Firefox Security Alerts

August 7, 2009 – 4:01 pm

By Andrew Brandt In the past week, we’ve begun to see new fakealerts — those disturbingly effective, entirely bogus “virus warning” messages — that appear to impersonate the appearance and text of legitimate warning dialogs you might see while surfing with the Firefox browser, or searching Google. The dialog, in a stern, red dialog box [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in adware, Rogue Security Products, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: fakealert, Google Safe Browsing Advisory, malwareurlblock, malwareurlblock.com, Personal Antivirus, rogue antivirus, rogue security product, Visiting this site may harm your computer | Comments (13)

Jackson/Fawcett Malware is Extortion-ware

June 26, 2009 – 12:12 pm

By Andrew Brandt As I reported yesterday, searches for information about the deaths of Michael Jackson or Farrah Fawcett were turning up links to malware. This came as no surprise to anyone, though the speed with which the links spread was astonishing: Within minutes of the first confirmation that Jackson had succumbed to a heart [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in adware, Blackhat SEO, Firefox, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: Adware-Sabotch, fakealert, farrah fawcett, Koobface, michael jackson, rogue antivirus, System Security, trojan-cognac | Comments (4)

Drive-by Downloads Still Pack a Punch – If You Click

June 24, 2009 – 9:25 am

By Andrew Brandt In the course of surfing around, looking for ways to get infected, I stumbled upon a site that offers visitors downloads of key generators, cracks, and other ways to circumvent the process used by most legitimate software companies to prevent people who didn’t pay for the software from registering or using it. [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Phishing Trojans, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: Antivirus Plus, fake Security Center, fake warning, fakealert, Koobface, rogue, Spyware.IEmonster.D, Suurch | Comments (2)

May Threat Trend: Misleading Malware

June 9, 2009 – 11:11 am

By Andrew Brandt The latest data from our customers indicate that, at least in the month of May, we were blocking and removing some of the nastiest threats on the Web. Among the spies we took out, we hit Fakealerts and Rogue Security Products hard. These spies simply try to fool you into making purchases [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Phishing Trojans, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: baloney, fake warning, fakealert, rogue, rogue antispyware, rogue antivirus | Leave a Comment

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