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Background

Due to widely publicized security problems with Microsoft Windows, particularly its vulnerability to viruses, all users of Windows must use antivirus software, such as the included Microsoft Security Essentials.

One scam attempts to trick users into installing supposed antivirus software that is a virus or at the very least is useless. This is sometimes known as "Scareware" or "Rogue Security Software". We prefer the more descriptive term "Fake Antivirus Software".

Scammers and virus-writers have caught on to this fact and are now attempting to fool credulous users into downloading more viruses by installing fake antivirus software.

The Scam

Typically, this scam takes the form of a picture on a website or a popup browser window that is mocked up to look vaguely like a MS Windows dialog box which claims that your computer is "infected" or "needs optimizing" or has "corrupted registry" or similar language. It is important to know that neither your browser, any image file nor a remote server would have any way of knowing that.

None of this is typically true and the purported cure offered by clicking the link is actually some type of malicious software in its own right. In a variant, the software itself is merely useless, but a fee is charged by credit card or Paypal or another means.

Do not click on these images or dialog boxes.

Another fake virus notification

Other information

These pages can sometimes be very official looking, We have seen variants which play elaborate simulations of a "scan" complete with progress meters, "Throbbers", even fake "Toast". None of these mean a thing, they can easily be mocked up as a video file such as a flash element or a GIF animation.

UNIX is totally invulnerable to Windows viruses as is Mac OS and, in fact, any other operating system except Windows itself. Mac and UNIX viruses do exist but they are exceedingly rare. The last known UNIX virus in "the wild" was quite a long time ago . UNIX systems do not need antivirus software¹. UNIX workstations in the Vistua Network do not need to worry about any of this.

It is true that Windows systems registries can become a mess and need optimization but this is a specialist task that should be attempted only by an experienced Windows system administrator! Once again, a webpage would not have any way to know if this was true.

We recommend that Windows computers have up to date antivirus software such as Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, or AVG, all of which are free.

External Links

• Wikipedia:Scareware
• Wikipedia:Linux Malware
• Wikipedia:Morris Worm The Great Worm of 1988 infected BSD, VAX and Sun OS versions of UNIX.

Notes

¹ Unless they are mailservers serving untrusted users, or servers in a network with Windows or Mac clients. Since we have Windows clients in our WLAN, we do actually have AV software running on the UNIX hosts.

Categories: Software, Security