Article by George Norman

On 02 May 2011

Fake antivirus (AV) products or rogues are applications that claim to be genuine antivirus products in order to scam you out of your hard earned money. The typical infection scenario goes something like this: a Trojan infects the user’s PC, then it blasts the user with all sorts of notifications that claim the computer is infected, notifications that ask the user to download and install a rogue. Once the rogue is installed, it claims that an infection has been detected and asks the user to purchase a license to get rid of that infection.

It is all nothing but a scam. There is no real infection and the fake AV certainly does not have any malware removal capabilities. It’s nothing but trickery meant to part the user and his money.


The thing is that fake AV for desktop PCs show up regularly. The news is that a fake AV for mobile has been spotted in the wild by security researchers from CA Technologies, IT management software and solutions company with expertise across all IT environments. The rogue, which uses the good name of Kaspersky Lab to trick users, is targeting Russian speaking mobile users. The rogue claims it has identified two security threats and says it encountered an error while trying to remove the threats.

This mobile rogue is believed to be an early experiment as it lacks the monetization vector. The rogue doesn’t provide a link, email or number to contact and resolve the errors it encountered while trying to remove the so-called threats it discovered. For the scam to be complete and get some money from infected users, it would have to provide a download link or some other form of paying for a license to activate the rogue.

In related news, if you want to use a Kaspersky Lab-developed security software solution to protect your mobile, use Kaspersky Mobile Security 9, which was rolled out back in February. It has the following to offer:

• Locate a lost or stolen device.
• Remotely block or wipe a lost or stolen device.
• Store contacts, photos and files in encrypted folders.
• Hide and unhide phonebook entries, SMSs and call logs
• Block calls and SMS messages from specific numbers.
• Parental controls that allows you to restrict your child’s calls and messages as well as keep track of his whereabouts.
• Excellent malware protection. Real-time antimalware scans, automatic updates, blocking of dangerous network connections, and so on.

Additional information on Kaspersky Mobile Security 9 is available here.



Tags: Kaspersky Lab, Security, Kaspersky Mobile Security 9, Rogue

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