Cyber-Criminals Peddling Fake AV That Looks Very Much Like the Real Thing
By: Fahmida Rashid, eWeek
Developers of fake antivirus software are getting better at copying the look and feel of legitimate antivirus products to make it harder for victims to tell whether they are being scammed or not, according to Kaspersky Lab.
A fake antivirus Website was found specially designed to mimic the interface for antivirus products from Kaspersky Lab, Symantec's Norton and Avira, Dmitry Bestuzhev, an antivirus researcher at Kaspersky Lab, wrote on the SecureList blog Nov.29. The initial infection was triggered by a dropper Trojan that downloaded onto the user's computer the fake screen that closely resembled legitimate software.
In the past, rogue antivirus products were fake screenshots taken from a generic template. "These fakes didn’t claim to find any infections—the victim was simply ripped off after paying for a useless product," said Bestuzhev. A recent version observed by Kaspersky Lab simulates the actual scanning process on the victim's PC, he said.
