Trojan Infected Software Cause Virus Infections

There are thousands of down-loadable software applications that carry trojans and viruses that can cause your computer to become infected. Symantec calls these applications “Misleading Applications”. These types of applications disguise themselves as anti-virus and firewall applications along with many other free down-loadable games and tools. This type of virus attacks are rogue software and anti-virus applications that cause pop-ups and balloons indicating that you may be infected and they want you to download their software to clean your computer. These unexpected pop-ups are typically the last indication that you have been infected. These types of infections use social engineering to talk you into buying their anti-virus software.

How this type of infection takes place

They distribute themselves via search based advertising of free software, pirated software, blogs, adult content, email, banner ads and via browser exploits. Many of the “Free Software” sites are littered with these virus infected programs. When an unexpected user is online surfing the web, they use the above methods to distribute trojans and viruses that cause false pop-up warnings about virus infections and coax the user to click on the application to scan their computer. Once the trojan claims that it has scanned the computer and it has found a virus (which is another false claim), they indicate that the problem can’t be fixed unless you pay for the full version of the program. This social engineering trick causes the end user to give their personal information to scammers which puts them at greater risk. Also, once the application is installed on their computer, it is typically very difficult to remove the unwanted software. The application pop-ups (anti-virus, firewall or security) that take place is typically the last part of the chain of events. Once you see one of these pop-ups, you’ve already been infected and the program is running in memory.

Examples of Fake Anti-Virus Software

Antivirus Doktor 2009

Antivirus System Pro

Google Tips Infection

Another way to detect if you’re infected is if you see a “Google Tips” banner on Google indicating that you have an unregistered version of Anti-virus 2009 or similar type of anti-virus software in the Google Tip.

What To Do

You MUST be proactive and secure your PC before a virus infection takes place. This is typically not the case and we’ve found that most people looking for anti-virus software are the ones that are already infected by these rouge applications. Follow these simple steps before it’s too late.

1. Install one of the leading anti-virus and firewall software packages from a major vendor (McAfee, F-Secure, Trend Micro, Computer Associates, Panda Security, Kaspersky)
2. Make sure your computer is setup to download and install security updates on a regular schedule. Microsoft releases their updates on a monthly basis. This is every second Tuesday of every month. Microsoft also releases what’s called “Out Of Band” security updates as well. These out of band updates are updates for their software that are considered a major update.
3. Make sure all your third party software applications are up to date as well. Install these updates when they are released. Vulnerable applications like Adobe Reader, Flash Player and Active-X are common programs that are taken over.
4. Think before you click on any suspicious links on web pages, blogs and even in emails.
5. Check your anti-virus software on a weekly or monthly basis to make sure it is functioning properly.

Conclusion

Be very careful and make sure your proactive about your virus protection. If it’s too late, then take action now and install one of the major programs listed above under the “What to do” section.

Tagged as: Google Tips Infection, Trojan Applications, Virus Infected Anti-Virus Software, Virus Social Engineering