rogue security product « 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: 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: Adware-Sabotch, antivirus 2010, fakealert, rogue antivirus, rogue security product, sabotch, Trojan-Downloader-Dermo, Windows Web Security | 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)

No Search is Sacred: Fakealerts Flood the Net

October 7, 2009 – 11:52 am

By Andrew Brandt Search engines appear to be no longer in control of the search results they display at any given moment. That’s bad news not only for the search giants, but for anyone who relies on their results. How can that be? After all, it’s the search engines’ own servers that are supposed to [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Blackhat SEO, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: antivirus 2010, google manipulation, rogue antivirus, rogue security product, rogue seo | Comments (10)

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)

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