outrageous scam site!!!
Sunday, 9 August 2009 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eToday I accidentally happened across this scam site that seems to intercept google searches somehow (I was trying to find out what would dissolve a particular epoxy resin called Araldite here in Australia). Google came up with a lot of results, including this fake site called
onlinesecurescannerv3.com
At first it came up with an annoying pop-up telling me that my computer is infected and would I like to do an online scan. I cancelled, but it pretended to do a scan anyway and came up with the utterly amazing screen which I've put behind this lj-cut tag:
How astonishing is the level of work that has gone into that! I had no idea the scammers had gotten so sophisticated now. The window looks just like a standard Microsoft Windows file view. The red warnings of numbers of trojans in "Shared Documents" and the two hard drives blink to attract attention, the green fake scanning line grew to the right, and the blue window could be moved around just like a real window. Just one problem... I'm using Linux and my system looks nothing like this. Even when I used to use MSWindows I always used a different color scheme from the standard.
When I dragged the fake "Windows Security Alert" window to the side the site tried to send me an installable file. If I'd been using Microsoft InternetExplorer on Microsoft Windows this might not have even notified me (I'm not sure if they fixed that security hole yet) before installing it. Even if I saved the file to my machine on Linux I doubt it would have run. I don't use Wine because of just such risks (Wine lets Linux fool programs into thinking they are in a MSWindows machine thus allowing them to run).
Once installed on the machine I shudder to think what such a program could do. Horrifying.
I wonder how many people are sucked in by such assholes. I hope the cops come down on these scum-sucking bastards. Warn as many people as possible of the dangers of such sites. The only real safety here is knowledge.
onlinesecurescannerv3.com
At first it came up with an annoying pop-up telling me that my computer is infected and would I like to do an online scan. I cancelled, but it pretended to do a scan anyway and came up with the utterly amazing screen which I've put behind this lj-cut tag:
How astonishing is the level of work that has gone into that! I had no idea the scammers had gotten so sophisticated now. The window looks just like a standard Microsoft Windows file view. The red warnings of numbers of trojans in "Shared Documents" and the two hard drives blink to attract attention, the green fake scanning line grew to the right, and the blue window could be moved around just like a real window. Just one problem... I'm using Linux and my system looks nothing like this. Even when I used to use MSWindows I always used a different color scheme from the standard.
When I dragged the fake "Windows Security Alert" window to the side the site tried to send me an installable file. If I'd been using Microsoft InternetExplorer on Microsoft Windows this might not have even notified me (I'm not sure if they fixed that security hole yet) before installing it. Even if I saved the file to my machine on Linux I doubt it would have run. I don't use Wine because of just such risks (Wine lets Linux fool programs into thinking they are in a MSWindows machine thus allowing them to run).
Once installed on the machine I shudder to think what such a program could do. Horrifying.
I wonder how many people are sucked in by such assholes. I hope the cops come down on these scum-sucking bastards. Warn as many people as possible of the dangers of such sites. The only real safety here is knowledge.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-09 05:33 am (UTC)Not so much with the random capitalisations but you see it so much in corp-speak that it's easy to bland over.
I could easily see people being taken in my this. Hell, I'd get a bit of a heartshock if I saw it on one of my win-machines.
I wonder if NoScript would have blocked this.
I'm more worried about it intercepting your google search. I have heard of it happening, but usually at an ISP level.
fake scanner
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-08-09 05:54 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: fake scanner
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-08-09 04:44 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: fake scanner
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-08-10 10:19 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: fake scanner
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-08-12 06:03 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: fake scanner
From:Internet security threat scam
Date: 2009-09-01 06:41 pm (UTC)I came across this post while looking up an article on C.L. Stong, and saw that you got this anti-virus scam. The problem you describe appears to be common now, if not prevalent on the internet. It's very unfortunate. It happened to me on an unprotected laptop in a very similar manner a week ago. "Closing" the window does no good, because it is not necessarily a real windows screen, but rather an image, and no matter where you click on the image, it goes ahead and runs.
I was also "hijacked" a while ago, by clicking on a link that google turned up in response to a search. The link was bad, and it in turn sent me to some Russian site that ended up installing spyware on my computer.
The solution to both problems was to use Firefox as my browser EXCLUSIVELY, and also to install an add-on called No-script on Firefox. The added layer of security forces you to manually accept any sites that the browser wants to visit. It prevents unknown (and un-seen) scripts from running that can cause harm.
I highly recommend it. Use the Firefox menu Tools --> Ad-Ons and then search for No-script.
Dan