The online criminal element is always looking for new ways to fool people. The latest is pretending to be legitimate software, a common trick, but it has not been used like this before. eSecurity Planet has the details.
Microsoft is warning users that a Trojan is masquerading as the company’s popular free Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) package.
The alert came from Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Malware Protection Center (MMPC) on Wednesday.
“One of the oldest tricks used by rogue antivirus products is to use a similar name as, or have a similar look and feel to, legitimate security software,” Microsoft said in a post on the MMPC’s Threat Research & Response Blog. “So it was inevitable that the day would arrive when a rogue would masquerade as something similar to Microsoft Security Essentials.”
The masquerading rogue security tool goes by the name Security Essentials 2010, which is very similar to the actual name of Microsoft’s suite, though the real suite does not have a date in its name.