IT Services Info & News | Ascensha

There’s been a recent development in the information security realm, and it’s not exactly a positive one. According to security experts, the last half of 2009 marks the massive growth of fake security software, also known as “scareware,” and now one of the Internet’s most profitable scams. As of November, security researchers pointed to more than 1 million web sites redirecting to the malicious software. What’s particularly unsettling, however, is that many unknowing victims are being directed to the sites via major search engines like Google and Yahoo.

If you’re like most of us who use search engines multiple times in a single day, how do you know that you, your employees, and your organization are staying safe?

The bright side is that only a small percentage of the scareware sites are immediately harmful. Most simply want to make a quick buck. The concept behind scareware is in its name — the criminal attempts to “scare” the user into downloading fake security software by using the fear of a computer virus as a motivating factor.

For instance, a pop-up screen may alert you that a virus has been detected on your computer and consequently redirect you to a site where you can download and/or purchase the security software to remove said virus. Once downloaded, the application could take any number of actions, the most fortunate of which is nothing. At the same time, there have been incidents in which scareware will encrypt a user’s files, make removal difficult and time consuming, and prevent legitimate antivirus software from correctly functioning or downloading. For businesses that deal with sensitive information (which is any business, really), a scareware compromise could be catastrophic.

Are you concerned about scareware yet? If not, you should be. Our next post will address some practical tips for guarding against it.

[photo: kennymatic]

Additional Resources:

• Do you trust your antivirus software?
• Clean Sweep: How well does your antivirus software remove malware?
• IT Security: Back to Basics

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Tags: antivirus software, Computer virus, fake security software, information security, malicious software, malware, phony software, Scareware

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:13 am and is filed under computer security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.