Fake antivirus software using ransom threats
Fake antivirus programs appear to be adopting some of the money-raising tactics of more threatening ransom malware, security company Fortinet’s latest threat report has found.
The most prevalent malware variant during August was TotalSecurity W32/FakeAlert.LU!tr, a malicious program that masquerades as antivirus software in order to sell worthless licenses for non-existent malware. On its own it accounted for 37.3 percent of all malware threats detected by the company during the month.
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Unlike standard fake antivirus programs, however, the new version of TotalSecurity takes the ruse a stage further by preventing any applications other than a web browser to run, claiming they are ‘infected’. The user is invited to have the infection cleaned by buying the bogus TotalSecurity product.
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Adding an extra layer of sophistication to its arsenal – and no doubt aware how quickly bogus antivirus software is blocked by genuine security products – TotalSecurity can now vary the downloads it feeds to target PC using server-side polymorphism. Put another way, the exact version downloaded to a victim’s PC will constantly change which makes detection harder.
“This is a technique typically seen with botnets, such as Waledac, and has been picked up by the developers of TotalSecurity. This is another example of how relying purely on antivirus is not a silver-bullet approach to protecting systems from infection,” said Fortinet’s threat research head, Derek Manky.
According to Fortinet, such attacks demonstrate the vulnerability of PC-based antivirus software. A layered defence would have a better chance of detecting TotalSecurity by either intercepting the initial spam used to spread it or by blocking the download website.
Once rare enough to be a curiosity, malware using threats and direct interference with a PC’s operation have slowly become more common.
A previous report from Fortinet in March noted a sudden surge in the technique, about a year after the first aggressive use of ransomware in the form of the notorious Vundo Trojan. That particular piece of malware used crude encryption of a victim’s files.
In July came news of the odd Krotten Trojan that disables a victim’s PC in a variety of ways before asking for a tiny payment to be made to a Ukrainian mobile phone network. Two months before that researchers in Japan discovered the Kenzero porn blackmail Trojan that threatens to post a victim’s embarrassing browsing history to a public website.
