Rogues and the dark side of online money making

Scareware

Have you got the anti-virus software that shows you a list of threats and won't go away until you buy a registration for it? Does it look more like a virus than legitimate anti-virus? If that sounds about right then you most likely are dealing with rogue anti-malware threat. The following video by rynesandbergfan23 shows a demonstration of what the rogue anti-malware (or anti-virus for that matter) is and what it's capable of. The example of rogue anti-malware used in the video is called XP Anti Spyware. The attempt to get rid of the rogue software is made by the help of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware which, on this occasion, proves to be unsuccessful:

Here are some names of rogue security software: Antivirus PC 2009, PCSuperCharger, DrAntispy, AntiMalware Pro, AntiSpywareMaster. (Extensive list of names can be seen here.) Some common patterns can be singled out:

• there is no name of the developer / publisher mentioned;
• the software name includes 'super', 'pro', 'master' and probably other hyperbolic terms.

Method of removal

Rogue software should be treated as malware therefore its removal is carried out by using anti-malware software provided by genuine and established publisher. For suggested free malware and rogue software removal tools click here. I'd suggest to follow the computer cleaning method outlined by me here. All the more because the method suggested can be used without the computer being connected to the Internet.

If you want to report a website hosting malware/scareware/spyware

Help to make the Internet a better place and report malicious URLs by going to Badwarebusters.org. Thank you.

The dark side of cyber business

More information on what part of the Internet the rogue anti-virus software (scareware) belongs to, you can find in the extensive summary by Dmitry Samosseiko, a data security researcher at data protection company SophosLabs Canada. The aforementioned research deals with the dark side of the Internet:

• spam and other online promotional tactics that are more or less of criminal nature;
• adult and casino sites of obscure origin;
• scareware;
• fake pharmacy products;
• Black Hat SEO.

While the article is supposed to be about the online affiliate programs known as Partnerka in Russia, it is informative enough for everyone in terms of awareness of what to look out for while browsing the Internet, clicking on advertising links, dealing with email and registering at websites, so that one can avoid of becoming a victim to malicious tactics used by cyber criminals. The file can be viewed and downloaded by clicking here.
The author of this blog strongly recommends against both: abuse of information and participation in criminal activities.

Download and test these products for free for 30 days:

Internet Security Pack: AntiVirus+Firewall

Online Armor Premium Firewall

Free anti malware tools from Emsisoft

There is a variety of malicious software removal tools available from Emsisoft for both, regular and advanced users.

Emsisoft Anti-Malware

For regular users the Anti-Malware software would be most suitable. It is available for download as a full free trial version for 30 days. After that time period in case the license is not renewed it switches to freeware version. Here is the list of features available in full version of Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0:

• File Guard that works as a real-time shield and compares every file downloaded to known malware patterns;
• dual scan engine consisting of: E1/A2 Emsisoft Anti-Malware engine, and E2/IK Ikarus Anti-Virus engine: a combination that works as 2 in 1. Available also in freeware mode.
• Behaviour Blocker: constantly monitors the behavior of all active programs and raises an alarm as soon as something suspicious happens. Works without the need for malware signatures as it is designed to be a part of so called zero-day protection capable of recognizing malicious actions performed by hijackers, trojans, keyloggers, spyware, adware, viruses, rootkits and worms by detecting their malicious behaviour in system;
• Updates can be set to be downloaded as often as 5 times a day;
• HiJack Free, an integrated system analysis tool designed for professionals to monitor autorun and running processes, services, port configuration, installed ActiveX objects (can be submitted for online analysis), LS Protocols. Advanced user's feature, available also in freeware mode;
• Commandline scanner. Also an advanced user's feature. A scanner without GUI.

If you want to perform just a quick check on your system, there are two available options that allow you to do just that: Web Malware scanner and MalAware, cloud and signature based light-weight freeware online scanner. Click here and proceed to Freeware section to perform a quick scan on your machine.

Emsisoft Emergency Kit is also available from the Freeware section at publisher's website. It is a very convenient tool to be kept on your USB stick in case your system fails to load the OS because of a virus or other malware. This is really more of an advanced user / admin type of software as it contains Commandline scanner which is supposed to be run from the command prompt; a HiJackFree tool (see the description for Anti-Malware above); and BlitzBlank, a tool that requires more advanced knowledge of Windows Operating System as it lets you delete malicious objects at boot time by using scripts. It is useful for removing locked files, destroying Windows Registry entries, disabling Windows drivers.

Download and test these products for free for 30 days:

Internet Security Pack: AntiVirus+Firewall

Online Armor Premium Firewall

Free anti spyware tools by Trend Micro

• HouseCall. A free Web-based tool designed to scan your PC for a wide range of Internet security threats including viruses, worms, Trojans, and spyware. You can download HouseCall directly from the TrendMicro's website, download takes a short time as the file is not too big, just double-click the file after it has finished downloading and there you go. 
• RUBotted. Real-time monitoring of your network (Internet) connection for potential infection and suspicious activities associated with bots. During its installation RUBotted installs additional third-party freeware called WinPcap for capturing the incoming/outgoing data packets. Upon discovering a potential infection, RUBotted will identify and clean them with HouseCall. So if you are concerned about someone from the outside using and abusing your machine, TrendMicro's RUBotted is the way to go. 
• Trend Smart Surfing. Designed for iPhone and iPod touch devices. It is the first secure browser to protect you from Web pages with malicious intent. If you attempt to access a bad or malicious URL, Smart Surfing is designed to block access to the URL and a notification will appear in the browser. 
• Trend Micro HijackThis is a free utility that generates an in-depth report of registry and file settings from your computer. HijackThis makes no separation between safe and unsafe settings in its scan results giving you the ability to selectively remove items from your machine. In addition to this scan and remove capability HijackThis comes with several tools useful in manually removing malware from a computer. This is a very handy tool if you are an administrator/advanced user and know what you are doing. By using HijackThis you can see if you still have some useless or strange browser objects, processes that are not supposed to maintain data streams and to be connected to the Internet, and so on.

Here is a YouTube video showing how to use HijackThis. Watch this before you attempt to do anything in HijackThis:

Stay safe!