August 26, 2010

Tricks and tips Scareware Users Into Removing Antivirus Software

Larger companies that produce Symantec Antivirus Antivirus AnVi issued a warning about a (new retroviruses), which is designed to kill a legitimate antivirus software. AnVi Antivirus is part of a social engineering attack designed to trick users into the product to get rid of antivirus software vendors such as AVG, Spyware Doctor, Symantec, Microsoft and Zone Labs.

The trick up the software's sleeve is that it actually uses legitimate antivirus programs' own uninstallers to get users to uninstall the software In particular, if a user executes a malicious file -- generally dubbed Trojan.FakeAV by Symantec -- it launches a system-level popup window warning them that their currently installed antivirus product isn't certified and is compromising system performance, and should be uninstalled. Regardless of whether or not a user clicks "ok" or simply closes the window manually, AnVi then launches the legitimate antivirus software's uninstaller. At that point, a user would need to click the actual "uninstall" button for the software to be removed.

Interestingly, the malicious file -- which may be installed by malware, drive-by downloading, visiting fake antivirus websites, or come bundled with other software -- actually searches out currently installed antivirus software in the Windows registry subkey, then "launches the uninstaller for certain legitimate antivirus software," said Symantec.

At the same time, the malicious file attempts to download AnVi Antivirus, a new clone of retrovirus CoreGuardAntivirus2009, not to be confused with the Vormetric technology of the same name. Once activated, "the program reports false or exaggerated system security threats on the computer," said Symantec. "The user is then prompted to pay for a full license of the application in order to remove the threats."

However, the fake antivirus program itself is the threat, and provides no antivirus functionality.

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