![]() For the latest business technology news, follow on Twitter. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. This article, " Scareware impersonates legit antivirus software from AVG," was originally published at. The troubling question here is, what other popular and respected technology brands might malware makers start using for criminal activities? "It's like copyright infringement is some great, punishable offense, well beyond just stealing money." "I've always been amazed how go out of their way not to violate legitimate names and copyright: McAfe, McCatte, MacAfee, etc.," he said. In the past, Grimes said, the purveyors of fake antivirus software have been surprisingly respectful of copyrights, avoiding using exact product names and logos. "We've always had Trojan versions, since the early days of McAfee, but not like this." "Although there are literally tens of thousands of fake AV programs, this is the first I've known that faked a legitimate AV so well," he said. I ran this one by InfoWorld Security Adviser Roger Grimes, and he confirmed that AVGAntivirus2011 is unusual. Even a relatively savvy user, such as one who takes the time to do an Internet search for "AVG antivirus" to see if the program is legit, might end up being fooled. ![]() The difference here is that this program very closely imitates a known and trusted product, including a professional-looking GUI alongside an existing product name and logo. It's a variant of the existing Win32/FakeXPA malware, in fact. This breed of scareware in and of itself likely sounds familiar. With the free version of this software, you’ll get access to important. When the user attempts to launch one of these apps, the malware launches instead. AVG Antivirus shares the same core technology as other Avast programs but has its own unique user-interface design. Once installed on a system, the malware makes changes to the registry, adds a launch button to the Start menu and icon to the desktop, and sets itself as the default debugger for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari. The program pretends to perform a security scan of a user's system, claims to find an array of dangerous malware, and prompts the user to purchase a full version of the "antivirus software" to commence the system-cleansing process. Microsoft has issued an alert about AVGAntivirus2011, malware that purports itself to be AVG Antivirus 2011. In what could be an alarming preview of tomorrow's malware-spreading techniques, a new version of scareware is on the move, one that's designed to look exactly like it's a legitimate antivirus product from reputable security company AVG.
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