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Scareware scammers are trying to game search engines into promoting crudware sites when a surfer searches for information on Ford cars.
Attacks of this type, themed around events such as the recent tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson, are becoming increasingly commonplace. However, attacks themed around a single well-known brand have to date been extremely rare, if not unprecedented.
The Ford scareware campaign features around one million links, all targeting the Ford Motor Company, designed to trick search engines into promoting malicious pages towards the top of search results. Malvertised pages are punting a rogue anti-virus product, called MS AntiSpyware 2009. The malicious application attempts the scare users into buying software of little of no utility on the basis of fraudulent scan results that report systems are infected, whether they are or not.
A full write-up of the attack, including screenshots and list of targeted search terms, can be found in a posting on Panda Security's blog here.
Rogue security (AKA scareware) packages are growing in prevalence, as they become one of the most straightforward ways for hackers to make big money from poor internet security. The head-count of scareware packages in circulation rose from 2,850 in July to 9,287 in December 2008, according to the latest figures from the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Last week Microsoft reported that its malicious software removal tool had detected two rogue scareware packages, FakeXPA and FakeSecSen, on more than 1.5 million PCs in the second half of 2008 alone. ®
COMMENTS
made up title here
This sort of thing keeps me in work cleaning up after this rubbish, but the people who do these things are utter bastards and will burn
RE: I always click on those free scan thingies
@Goat Jam
You're not the only one mate I had a pop-up last week that informed me that it was scanning my registry for traces of viruses and malware. Then it said it was scanning my C: drive for trojans.
It claimed to find some and I couldn't have been happier. Considering I haven't got a registry or a C: drive, I knew it was absolutel bollocks from the start but it made me laugh like a drain.
I didn't install the "free download" simply because Windows malware can't (easily) be run on OSX!
I always click on those free scan thingies
I mean they must be legit right? They look all Windows XPish and all. Besides, it's fun to see all the Windoze spyware and other bad stuff I apparently have on my computer.
It sort of makes me feel like I fit in with the rest of the slavering masses knowing I might have rampant Windows malware infections, even though I am running Linux.
Then I go back to doing real work and chuckle about what a crapfest the Windows monoculture is.
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