TechGreatest
“Anti-Virus Apps” Scam Hits Android, Windows Phone
Fake, malicious anti-virus apps target Android, Google Play and even Windows Phone
Anyone remember Virus Shield? No doubt those that downloaded the anti-virus that wasn’t will remember it, as do most security professionals. Somehow, an app that promised security yet delivered nothing made its way onto Google’s Play store and duped people out of their money. Thankfully, people got their money back and the developer said sorry for the apparent mistake.
Yet cyber crooks caught on. They started to develop their own, considerably more malicious fake anti-virus apps. And they’re hitting up more platforms than just Android.
Russian security firm Kaspersky says it has uncovered two rather interesting fake anti-virus apps, one of which was discovered on Windows Phone Store. That’s right, even though Microsoft’s platform is as popular as a UKIP member doing a poo on a Nelson Mandela statue (I exagerrate… a little), cyber criminals have deemed it worthy of their attention.
Rather cheekily the scammers dressed their program up as a Kaspersky Mobile app. Unsurprisingly, Kaspersky was a little bemused. “This fake app pretends to carry out some useful activity such as ‘scanning’ files. But look closely at the screenshot and you will see that as well as showing ‘scan progress’ it is supposedly performing a ‘heuristic analysis’. As a rule, anti-virus solutions don’t display a separate progress bar for a heuristic analysis,” said Kaspersky Lab expert Roman Unuchek, in a blog post.
They didn’t stop at copying Kaspersky, though. They created their own Windows Phone Virus Shield, a Google Chrome Pro clone and a Netscape browser. Netscape? Did these crooks travel in time? Or are they just old and stupid? Either way, they’re idiot savants of the most hilarious order.
The second fake AV, another clone called Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2014, was found on Google Play, hackers’ favourite store. In this case, the dodgy developers didn’t bother adding much to the design…
“The fake app does absolutely nothing to protect the user’s device – the creators didn’t even bother to add a simulation of a scanner. Instead of a security solution the buyer gets nothing more than a fake app whose functionality is limited to random statements along the lines of a Magic 8-Ball set against a background of the Kaspersky Anti-Virus logo,” Unuchek adds.
Indeed, they don’t seem like the smartest of crooks. They uploaded an app called “I Am Rich” for $100. I needn’t say anymore.
Unuchek makes a good point too when he says, “the mechanisms put in place by the official stores are clearly unable to combat scams like this”. We’re likely to see increasing numbers of fake AV across mobile markets.
So whilst the original Virus Shield app designer didn’t mean to cause any harm, they’ve inspired malicious developers to create a bunch of horrible software to trick people out of money. A lengthy slow clap all round is in order.