The €10 million a month scareware scam
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in phishing, Blog, Security, Internet on
Fake antivirus software is nothing new. Indeed, one South Korean chap called Lee Shin-ja was recently arrested and charged with doing the virtual equivalent of running into a room, shouting fire and then selling fire extinguishers that might or might not work. He was charged with selling a total of 1.26 million licenses for an antivirus product to clean computers of non-existent infections in a three year period. A nice little earner that is said to have netted him around €7.5 million in total.
But that pales into insignificance with the latest report coming out of the PandaLabs which suggest that a total of 30 million computers have been infected by such scareware fake antivirus operations. And the gangs behind the scams are earning more than €10 million a month, every single month.
Dominic Hoskins of Panda Security UK told me that the information ha has suggests that “some 3 percent of these users have provided their personal details in the process of buying a product that claims to disinfect their computers.”
Which of course is part of the scam, not only does it relieve you of some money for nothing but can also put you into dire straits courtesy of nabbing your banking or credit card details at the same time.
Hoskins reckons that most of the time the victim will “never even receive the product” and if you extrapolate from an average European price of €49.95 “we can calculate that the creators of these programs are receiving more than €10 million per month.”
Serious business indeed, and simply done by creating thousand upon thousands of variants of adware, splashing it across the Internet and then waiting for the money to roll in. The adware pops up warnings that the computer is infected and backs this up by the use of screensavers and pop-up windows to trick the victim into believing it. Even fake Blue Screens of Death have been employed to turn the screw.
Eventually, and quite often, the victim gives in and takes the option to buy the ‘antivirus’ software cure that is being offered. Even savvy users get caught in the trap as Hoskins says “these programs are very difficult to disinfect. In general, it can take users up to three days to completely remove this threat from a computer.” So even they can get worn down by it all and pay up.
A video showing exactly how this works can be viewed at the PandaLabs site. There are also some screenshots of this kind of scareware in action on Flickr.
The best advice is the same as ever though: don’t be a link clicking idiot, don’t get drawn like a moth to a flame by every e-greeting card notice or email telling you there is a sexy video waiting for you to watch. Be sensible in your browsing habits and the chances are you will never have to get scared by con men with virtual fire extinguishers.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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Dumbest phisher in history revealed
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Blog, phishing, Spam, Security, email, Internet on
Look, like most people I get a lot of spam and a fair amount of it would fall into the phishing scam category I guess. Quite apart from the stuff that has not been sent to one of my email accounts, I also get to see stuff forwarded to me by concerned readers of magazines or websites to which I contribute. A little hint, there is no point sending me copies of your spam so please stop it. The only exclusion being when you have a real news story to throw in my direction, and ‘look at this spam’ is not it.
Anyway, the point of this posting is that it really takes a lot to stand out amongst the phishing crowd these days. Much of it is very sophisticated, using every technique possible to obfuscate the real sender address. Much of it comes in HTML format with the body painstakingly copied from an authentic bank or business communication: branding, logos and house style copied to the last dot. Much of it is very believable, after all that is the whole point of a phishing scam, you have to reel your mark in, make them believe to bite and get caught on your fraudulent hook.
Which is why I just had to ignore my own ‘don’t forward your spam’ advice and share this message from what has to be a candidate for the dumbest phisher in history award.
What you won’t see here is the Japanese script which was left intact at the top of the HTML format email, something of a clue that the letter might not be from Dr Mike Ellis, Group Finance Director of the Halifax bank of Scotland after all. As, indeed, is the free webmail @yahoo.co.jp Japanese return address.
And that is quite before we get to the bit about him happening to find a dormant account in his office, containing £15 million, and for some reason wanting to make a business arrangement with me so that we can share it. Not that ‘Dr Mike’ actually says what he has in mind, nor even that I should contact him about it. I guess he assumes I am smart enough to know a good thing when I see it and compose that eager response.
Do you think I should reply?
mkellis111@yahoo.co.jp
Good day to you,
I am Dr. Mike Ellis, Group Finance Director Halifax Bank of Scotland, I
have urgent and very confidential business proposition for you. I
discovered a dormant account in my office, worth 15,000,000 million
pounds.
- Dr Mike Ellis
Rated: 60% (2 votes)
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