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The Proliferation Of Scareware Hits Home

By Prefect ⋅ March 16, 2010 ⋅ 2 comments

The agitation in the voice on the phone shook me from sleep early Saturday morning: My Uncle the surgeon had a computer problem and he was concerned enough to call. He explained he had been trying to view pictures of a newly renovated base in South Korea when all of a sudden McAfee popped up and did a scan, revealing 28 viruses. But for some reason the new module McAfee wanted him to install wasn’t working because the site wouldn’t accept either of his credit card numbers.

Scareware Purveyors, Spammers, and Crooks Take Advantage of Haiti Earthquake

By Prefect ⋅ January 14, 2010 ⋅ One comment

The worst earthquake in that area for 200 years, a magnitude 7.0, hit Haiti late Tuesday afternoon leaving areas like the capital of Port-au-Prince in ruins and many people in need. Predictably people are looking for ways to help and are using Google to search for relief agencies that can take donations to help the affected. Bad actors have taken advantage of this by engaging in search engine poisoning including taking over existing web sites, using techniques that boost search ranking, and installing malicious software using scareware tactics on user’s PC’s. They also set up fake donation web sites. Finally, they employ Spam e-mail, Twitter messages, and related electronic communication methods in order to direct users to these web sites.

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