New Malware Imitates Browser Warning Pages

Jake writes with this excerpt from Ars: "Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware, Rogue:MSIL/Zeven, that auto-detects a user's browser and then imitates the relevant malware warning pages from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. The fake warning pages are very similar to the real thing; you have to look closely to realize they aren't the real thing. The ploy is a basic social engineering scheme, but in this case the malware authors are relying on the user's trust in their browser, a tactic that hasn't been seen before. Beyond the warning pages, the actual malware looks like the real deal: it allows you to scan files, tells you when you're behind on your updates, and enables you to change your security and privacy settings. Performing a scan results in the product finding malicious files, but of course it cannot delete them unless you update, which requires paying for the full version. Attempting to buy the product will open an HTML window that provides a useless 'Safe Browsing Mode' with high-strength encryption. To top it all off, the rogue antivirus webpage looks awfully similar to the Microsoft Security Essentials webpage; even the awards received by MSE and a link to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center have been copied."

Comments

Themes

[characterZer0]

All the more reason to theme your window manager - it makes this stuff obvious.

Re:Themes

[qoncept]

So now we're up to, what, 1 legitimate reasons?

The new part of this

[querist]

One part is old - imitating the web browser error page, specifically the IE error page. I've had many a chuckle when running Galleon or some other Linux browser and seeing it pop up a well-imitated IE error page. The new part on this one is that they're checking which browser it is and making sure the error page matches the browser.