UK PC Users Hit By Huge Fake Antivirus Attack 75
An anonymous reader writes "UK Internet users were on the receiving end of a large drive-by web attack at the end of February, which attempted to push fake antivirus at least 750,000 times on a single day alone, security company AVG has said. According to a company analysis, on Sunday 27 February, detection levels for the previously obscure Russian 'Blackhole' exploit kit suddenly spiked to 900,000 globally from a few tens of thousands that would be typical for such kits, before dropping back again. Unusually, almost 750,000 of these detections were for UK PCs, which offers a baseline for what must have been a sustained attack several times that size against mainstream web servers frequented by users in the country."
Re:Computers not fun anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
I have had to remove several viruses lately. It wasn't by "drive-by web attack", it happened by people getting phone calls or letters through the post, some were even sent CDs and told to install the "AV software". Quite odd, but I have fixed several PCs where people have followed the 'advice' given to them.
I know I have several others to fix because they received phone calls pretending to be their ISP for example.
I make a living from these guys. (Score:3, Informative)
I've spent the past month clearing up the fall out of this explosion of Fake AV... It's the most common issue I see on computer in my repair shop these days, and has been for a few years now, but this confirms why it's been so hectic the past couple of weeks!
I am amused that AVG are going on about it when, like the rest of the mainstream antivirus products, AVG itself cannot prevent or remove these Fake AVs- by the time the user brings their computer to me, AVG, or any other antivirus is broken and crying in the corner of C:\Program Files, or just gone completely.