Anything for the Weekend Sir?
Cyber criminals are currently exploiting people’s fears about being infected by viruses.
And the media’s frenzied reporting about Conficker hasn’t helped either, with people panicking about being hit by the April Fool’s Day bug.
Microsoft have warned that the hackers latest ruse is to hide their malicious malware in bogus computer software programmes and then get people to download them. So whilst they think they are fully protected, the fake anti-virus is happily loading malware into their computer.
In the latest security intelligence report prepared by Microsoft, the General Manager of their Trustworthy Computing Group, George Stathakopoulos, said: “Rogue security software is the number one threat worldwide…If you think about the Conficker case, how many people went looking for a security solution and downloaded rogue malware? That means when users downloaded the software they probably gave away credit card numbers and got infected. That’s a double hit.”
This kind of scam security software is known as “scareware”. Worried users download a version, it spots a virus (which actually isn’t there), asks for a fee to clean the non-existent virus, collects the money and then pretends to guard the computer against future attacks, whilst in reality its collecting all the computer user’s personal information.
Microsoft reckon that nearly six million computers have been infected with these type of viruses and that there has been a near 70% rise in their use over a six month period.
And Microsoft believes there will be a massive rise in the use of scareware over the next few months, especially given the media’s coverage of the Conficker virus which makes computer user’s unsure of their levels of protection and open to bogus offers.
Microsoft has a $250,000 reward out there for information about who is behind the Conficker virus.
Guest Article by Neil Camp
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My name is Alan Potts and I'm the Editor of the Antivirus-BUYability web site and Managing Director of BUYability Limited. You can connect with me or keep up to date with new posts on this blog via the following social media sites: 
