Antivirus 2009 Makes Halloween Comeback
With Halloween just two days away, there are surely some of you that were so busy reading about the Professional Developers Convention in LA that you forgot to get a Halloween costume. No problem; a simple Internet search will surely lead you to a local or international company that will deliver you a ghoulish costume in time. But before you fire up your iGoogle and feed it “Halloween costumes” you must be warned that some search results will lead you to malware infected web pages.
Trend Micro, company that specializes in providing security software solutions, advises users that trustworthy, legitimate sites have been infected and consequently any visitor of said sites may get infected as well. The whole thing goes something like this: after the attacker injects a legitimate Halloween costume web page with a rogue JavaScript the visitors will automatically and covertly be redirected to a malware infected site. So if you are looking for a Halloween security challenge, type in the search words “Halloween” and “costumes” and go bobbing for malware.
You will definitely know that you have reached a malware spreading site when you will get an “Antivirus 2009” pop-up. The advertisement informs you that your system is not running as well as it should be, and this may be the result of “virus, adware or spyware” infection. You are invited to download Antivirus 2009 for free and see if your system is indeed plagued by malware. Do not be fooled by its name, Antivirus 2009 is not a security solution, it is malware!
Lennard Galang, security researcher with Trend Micro comments: “Usually in SEO Poisoning Attacks, malware authors compromise websites that are already top ranked in search engines, which may not be related to one another. Once compromised, they insert a specially crafted webpage on the compromised website so as upon using search engines or site searches, they can easily be visited or referred to.”
Trend Micro, company that specializes in providing security software solutions, advises users that trustworthy, legitimate sites have been infected and consequently any visitor of said sites may get infected as well. The whole thing goes something like this: after the attacker injects a legitimate Halloween costume web page with a rogue JavaScript the visitors will automatically and covertly be redirected to a malware infected site. So if you are looking for a Halloween security challenge, type in the search words “Halloween” and “costumes” and go bobbing for malware.
You will definitely know that you have reached a malware spreading site when you will get an “Antivirus 2009” pop-up. The advertisement informs you that your system is not running as well as it should be, and this may be the result of “virus, adware or spyware” infection. You are invited to download Antivirus 2009 for free and see if your system is indeed plagued by malware. Do not be fooled by its name, Antivirus 2009 is not a security solution, it is malware!
Lennard Galang, security researcher with Trend Micro comments: “Usually in SEO Poisoning Attacks, malware authors compromise websites that are already top ranked in search engines, which may not be related to one another. Once compromised, they insert a specially crafted webpage on the compromised website so as upon using search engines or site searches, they can easily be visited or referred to.”
