By Roger G. Best

Among the most current threats is a particularly nasty variety of malware is known as Antivirus Pro 2010.  This is another iteration of an old trick.  The threat is slightly different, as is what it actually does on your system, but it’s an ugly little beast any way you look at it.  Here’s the skinny on what it does and how it tries to “get” you.  It falls in a category of malware known as a Rogue Security program.  Simply put, this is software that claims to scan and detect malware or other problems on your computer.  But it trys to dupe, or in some cases even badger, you into purchasing the program by presenting you with intrusive, deceptive warnings and/or false misleading scan results.  It will typically use aggressive, deceptive advertising and can be installed without you even knowing you are installing something.  It will often present itself as a notice that there have been viruses found on your computer.  If you click anything (yep, anything), the program installs on your computer.  Even clicking the red X to exit will allow it to install on your computer. 

It often presents itself through “Braviax,” which is a Trojan Downloader that display alerts that can be quite alarming and do something very similar to the Rogue Security programs.  The whole goal is to coerce you into paying for rogue anti-malware applications that will clean the infections.  Again, this is a bogus promise that will, in fact, infect your systems with a myriad of other varieties of problematic (in fact, downright nasty) stuff.

If you see something that resembles the image below, contact your I.T. support immediately.  To put it in terms that many of us grew up with, do not pass go, do not collect $200, just call immediately.  Almost anything you do can install the malware.

You may even see a bogus Security Center dialog, like the one below, pop-up on your screen.  Again, this is intended to scare you into purchasing a solution to correct a problem that is being propagated upon your system at that point.

This Trojan Downloader, if given the chance, will download adware, spyware or some other nasty variety of malware from multiple servers and/or sources on the Internet.

I hope you find this helpful.  I’d love to hear about anything you experience while dealing with malware.  Please feel free to leave a comment.

Thanks,

Roger

Tags: Antivirus, Braviax, Malware, Rogue Security program, Trojan, Trojan Downloader

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Malware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.