The Ultimate Guide to Scareware Protection

Throughout the last two years, scareware (fake security software), quickly emerged as the single most profitable monetization strategy for cybercriminals to take advantage of. Due to the aggressive advertising practices applied by the cybercrime gangs, thousands of users fall victim to the scam on a daily basis, with the gangs themselves earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

What is scareware?
Basically, scareware, also known as rogueware or put in simple terms, fake security software, is a legitimately looking application that is delivered to the end user through illegal traffic acquisition tactics starting from compromised web sites (Sony PlayStation’s site SQL injected, redirecting to rogue security software), malvertising (MSN Norway serving Flash exploits through malvertising; Fake Antivirus XP pops-up at Cleveland.com; Scareware pops-up at FoxNews; Ukrainian “Fan Club” Features Malvertisement at NYTimes.com), or blackhat search engine optimization (9/11 related keywords hijacked to serve scareware; The most dangerous celebrities to search for in 2009; The Web’s most dangerous keywords to search for), to ultimately attempt to trick the user into believing their computer is already infected with malware, and that purchasing the application will help them get rid of it.

Upon execution, certain scareware releases will not only prevent legitimate security software from loading, but it will also prevent it from reaching its update locations in an attempt to ensure that the end user will not be able to get the latest signatures database. Moreover, it will also attempt to make its removal a time-consuming process by blocking system tools and third-party applications from executing.

There have also been cases where scareware with elements of ransomware has been encrypting an infected user’s files, demanding a purchase in order to decrypt them, as well as a single reported incident where a scareware domains was also embedded with client-side exploits.

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