A warning message that pops up from a Web site that claims the user's computer is currently contaminated or not running properly. Scareware is a dishonest attempt to cause a user to purchase antivirus, registry cleaner or some other software that repairs problems or enhances performance. See spyware and wares.
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2009 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
- News to know: Chrome OS; IE 9; Salesforce; Scareware
- Google's Chrome OS, IE 9, scareware, Salesforce.com, AT&T vs. Verizon and Black Friday deals top today's headlines. by Larry Dignan
- Blog posts 2009-11-18
- Thousands of web sites compromised, redirect to scareware
- RE: Thousands of web sites compromised, redirect to scarewareI'm glad Microsoft Windows goes the extra mile to protect users from this kind of mischief. In Microsoft Windows I can set security zones in the Internet Options window so that only trusted sites will load, or set it so internet...
- Discussion threads 2009-11-17
- Thousands of web sites compromised, redirect to scareware
- Security researchers have detected a massive blackhat SEO search engine optimization campaign consisting of over 200,000 compromised web sites, all redirecting to fake security software, commonly referred to as scareware. by Dancho Danchev
- Blog posts 2009-11-17
- My scareware night and how McAfee lost a customer
- With their Comcast and AT&T dealsMcAfee has a huge market share hereit pretty much does nothing to prevent being infected by these rogue antivirus attacks.I have found Combofix (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix)is the most effective tool to remove these things but even that isn't 100%.Usually you will want to rename it before you...
- Discussion threads 2009-11-12
- My scareware night and how McAfee lost a customer
- I had an ugly run-in with scareware last night, but I'm not sure what left me more annoyed: The dreaded Antivirus Pro 2009 scareware or McAfee, my anti-virus software provider. by Larry Dignan
- Blog posts 2009-11-12
- News to know: Spooky scareware; Ubuntu; Apple; Motorola
- Here are today’s notable headlines: Scary software, orange gadgets for Halloween, Microsoft and Ubuntu. by Larry Dignan
- Blog posts 2009-10-30
- Phishing experiment sneaks through all anti-spam filters
- A recently conducted ethical phishing New study details the dynamics of successful phishing experiment impersonating LinkedIn by mailing invitations coming from Bill Gates, has achieved a 100% success rate in bypassing the anti-spam filters it was tested against. The experiment emphasizes on how small-scale spear phishing campaigns...
- Blog posts 2009-10-29
- Spooky Halloween - scareware or crimeware?
- Who's to be scared?Which platforms are affected by the things that you mentioned Conficker and rogue AV scareware? Please let us know the whole picture so it is clear who needs to be concerned about this and who doesn't!Thank you in advance.I cosign n/t.While you're...
- Discussion threads 2009-10-29
- Spooky Halloween - scareware or crimeware?
- With all the "spooky" cybercrime trends taking place on a monthly basis, such as the death of CAPTCHA, the suspicious idleness of the Conficker botnet, the clear presence of government-tolerated and upcoming government-sponsored botnets, the inevitable migration from using malicious infrastructure to entirely relying on legitimate one, followed by the...
- Blog posts 2009-10-29
- New LoroBot ransomware encrypts files, demands $100 for decryption
- Researchers from CA have intercepted a new ransomware variant encrypting popular file extensions (.zip; .rar; .pdf; .rtf; .txt; .jpg; .jpeg; .waw; .mp3; .db; .xls; .docx; .xlsx; .doc) and demanding a $100 for the decryption software. According to the message which replaces the desktop's background upon execution, the...
- Blog posts 2009-10-27
- Gawker Media tricked into featuring malicious Suzuki ads
- A group of cybercriminals have successfully managed to trick Gawker's ad sales team into featuring malicious ads serving Adobe exploits (CVE-2008-2992; CVE-2009-0927) and scareware, by impersonating a legitimate ad agency inquiring about an upcoming Suzuki ad campaign. According to Gawker Media, the malware distributors were one of...
- Blog posts 2009-10-27
- Malware ads served from Gizmodo
- Popular gadget blog Gizmodo has acknowledged falling victim to an "elaborate scam" that served malicious ads for scareware (fake anti-virus) to its readers. by Ryan Naraine
- Blog posts 2009-10-27
- News to know: Apple; Alex; Microhoo; Droid; FCC
- Here are today's notable headlines. You can get News To Know via email alert and RSS daily. For continuous updates see BNET's around-the-Web tech coverage. Sam Diaz: Another strong quarter for Apple; credit strong iPhone, Mac sales Jason D. O'Grady: Apple announces most profitable...
- Blog posts 2009-10-20
- Fake 'Conficker.B Infection Alert' spam campaign drops scareware
- Not much they can do.Not much they can do.Email was never designed for security, and it's HARD getting everybody on the same page with a solution that works, because basically every solution we know of pretty much requires everybody to use it. But, unfortunately, it's difficult convincing people running email...
- Discussion threads 2009-10-19
- Fake 'Conficker.B Infection Alert' spam campaign drops scareware
- An ongoing spam campaign is once again attempting to impersonate Microsoft's security team -- the same campaign was first seen in April -- by mass mailing Conficker.B Infection Alerts (install.zip), which upon execution drop a sample of the Antivirus Pro 2010 scareware. Whereas the theme remains the...
- Blog posts 2009-10-19
- New Koobface campaign spoofs Adobe's Flash updater
- Earlier this week, the botnet masters behind the most efficient social engineering driven botnet, Koobface, launched a new campaign currently spreading across Facebook with a new template spoofing Adobe's Flash updater embedded within a fake Youtube page. The malware campaign is relying on compromised legitimate web sites,...
- Blog posts 2009-10-14
- Click fraud facilitating Bahama botnet steals ad revenue from Google
- Originally exposed as a botnet redirecting and monetizing hijacked traffic to over 200,000 parked domains primarily located in the Bahamas, researchers from ClickForensics have recently found evidence on active DNS hijacking of Google properties allowing cybercriminals to steal revenue from Google by pulling search results and displaying them on a...
- Blog posts 2009-10-08
- Malware affiliate bounty: Infect a Mac, earn 43 cents
- It's just what Apple deserves.Apple has long implied that its OS and software are inherently immune to attack. It's about time it and Mac owners were brought up short.It has begun...Now to see how long it will take before the Mac is as beset by malware as Windows.RE: Malware affiliate...
- Discussion threads 2009-09-25
- News to know: IDF; Skype; New neutrality; HP; Palm; Madoff
- Here are today's notable headlines. You can get News To Know via email alert and RSS daily. For continuous updates see BNET's around-the-Web tech coverage. John Morris: Intel: 32nm is just the beginning Sam Diaz: Intel on laptop chips: Speed kills Mary Jo...
- Blog posts 2009-09-24
- Scareware scammers hijack Twitter trending topics
- Just one more reason not to use these lame social networking sites. nt...RE: Scareware scammers hijack Twitter trending topicsThese scum seem to have a fascination with JayZ. I've had two "people" follow me just today, and in both cases they were "listening to JayZ" blah-blah-blah. Didn't take very long to...
- Discussion threads 2009-09-23
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