Cybercriminals Formulates New Way to Fool Individuals; Uses Bogus Version of Microsoft Security Essentials for their Scheme

Black hat hackers are once again launching their attack on their victims as they manage to lure them in a tech support scam using an interface similar to that of Microsoft Security Essentials, where it alerts users of malware presence on the computer and direct unsuspecting users to a fake support desk.

During an investigation, Chris Larsen at Blue Coat, a company providing security solutions for big companies, discovered a website that alerted the visitor of a malware detected on their computer and offered a free scan using Security Essentials tool. If the visitor complies and initiates the fake scan, a scan window very much resembling the one in the original product from Microsoft will display.

As a general characteristic for this type of fake alerts, scammers resort to all sort of tricks to make the matter seem urgent, so that the victim follows their lead.

They do this by displaying messages in red color with an alarming number of detected infections. Normally, by the hundreds or by the thousands, depending on the type of scan. Included with the alerts is a download link for a free security product that would propose purchasing a more feature-rich version in order to eliminate all malware detected on the system.

However, as Larsen reports, the operators behind this scam use a different type of business that requires interaction with the victim via web chat. This could be more lucrative for the crooks since most of them have the persuasive skills to convince the individual at the other end to purchase one of their products.

Although it may not seem so, tech support scams are very lucrative operations that can lure in hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling overpriced or pirated software to the victims.

Larsen says that the group behind this rip-off is most probably based in Eastern Europe since when he tried to contact a technician via the legitimate LiveChat web app, he was returned a message saying that no operators were on duty at that moment.