Viruses/Worms News

Scareware rogue antivirus programs dominate U.S. threats this month

Friday, October 30, 2009

Scareware programs that mimic antivirus scanners and trick PC users into purchasing scam software were the most common threat removed in October by Microsoft's malware removal tool, the company said this week.

In a report on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog, the company reported removing malware infections from more than 2.5 million infected PCs worldwide. The most common infections in the U.S. were rogue antivirus products.

"As of October 21st, the MSRT has removed the newly added threat, Win32/FakeScanti from 56,700 infected machines," Microsoft said. "For this month, it was the 12th most prevalent threat family worldwide and 7th in the U.S."

FakeScanti and other rogue security programs made up six of the top 10 threats in the U.S. this past month, Microsoft said.

Rogue antivirus scareware frequently spreads on compromised websites. The malware issues pop-ups in site visitors' web browsers warning them of a malware infection. The fake alerts convince thousands to purchase a phony antivirus product.

In other countries, password stealers and banking Trojans were the most common infections.