Technicalities

May 24, 2011

Scareware - The Bane of Web Browsing

I can hear the collective groan now from all three of the readers who persevere and click through to see if I got around to posting something. Yes, we must periodically talk tech. After all, if you are reading this, you are on the internet, using tech, and you should occasionally give some consideration to your safety online. However, I shall place the majority below the fold if you'd like to skip it... cause I'm nice that way. BTW - I am starting with a Mac story, but I do have a couple of things to say about Windows and Linux too.

Or just look at the pretty picture instead...

Almost two weeks ago the sensation of the day to hit the tech world was the MacDefender malware story. Basically it is a scam and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The reason it’s news? This is the first big malware scare to hit the Apple platform and become a nuisance.

It is a fact that for most of the OS lifetime Macs were not as attractive to malware writers. There have always been known vulnerabilities, but no major exploits. A small percentage of artists (this being the stereotypical Mac user for years) vs just about every business in the world… if you want to steal money, where do you spend your time and effort? As Macs become a larger market share, and move into the corner office, the world it be a-changing. It makes exploiting Macs worth the effort.

On to MacDefender. First let’s get it straight exactly what it is not… It is not a virus. It is not a trojan. It is not a worm. It’s malware. What I know of it from looking around the web is that it’s "scareware”. The pop up window scares people into downloading the "fix”. This means the user must act on the pop up window, the user must download it, the user must install it and approve it. Nothing jumps onto your system, except the original pop up, without extra and determined action by you the user. As far as I can tell, it also doesn’t grab data from your system which should be a relief to anyone who has installed the stuff. Let’s continue:

Like the Windows version… Antivirus 2011 or something like that. A notification box pops up on your screen when you’re out browsing the web to announce

You Have Thousands of Viruses on Your System!!! Click Here NOW to Get Rid of Them!!!

Or words to that effect. Many windows users have finally figured out that this is a scam, but there are still many who fall for it every day. Mac users never had to worry about it until now. If you saw the pop up, you laughed because it said "Windows” on it, now it says Mac which makes Mac users a bit uncomfortable. Once you’ve installed the pest on your system, it can go even farther in messing up your computer in an effort to get you to pay to "fix” it. Last I heard, the price was around $49, but it doesn’t really matter, they are looking to get money but also credit card number and personal information from the user.

Now you might think that I would deride people for falling for such an obvious ploy. But no, you would be wrong. Anyone can fall for a scam if it is something they are unfamiliar with or not expecting. For higher end users, there are higher end scams. Then there are the days when we’re tired or distracted thus might download this just to "get rid of that nuisance message”. The malware writers are not looking to catch everyone just enough people to make it worthwhile.

I went looking. As of 2009 there were 245 million people accessing the internet in the United States according to the CIA website. If only 1% of these people respond to the threat, that’s 2.45 million people. If they each pay $50 that is $122.5 million dollars! Plus access to all those credit cards, names, and addresses. That’s just the US. I think this looks like it’s worth their while. Don’t you?

So what’s to be done? That will be the subject of the next post. This one is getting a bit too long. I know… I should have a longer attention span, but I don’t. So you’ll have to stay alert, don’t download something because of a pop up window. You’ve made it this far. You can make it another day or so for some extra protection steps.

Posted by: Teresa in WebTech at 05:26 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 772 words, total size 5 kb.

1 Your posts are never boring - occasionally of limited interest (f'rinstance, if one doesn't use a Mac) but never boring. You obviously know what you're talking about, and that's always worthwhile.

Go right ahead; we'll wait.