I know dear old Ed Bott is a confirmed MS man but this is an interesting article about how browsers deal with "social engineering" attacks'
It's comparing IE9 with Chrome and it appears that IE9 is ahead of the game with this form of attack.
I though it was interesting and useful to read whatever your browser preference:)
System Manufacturer/Model Number: Hera OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Mint 9 CPU: Intel i5-2500k Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 Pro Memory: 2x 4Gb Corsair VENGEANCE DDR3-1600 Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce N260GTX Twin Frozr Sound Card: Realtek HD OnBoard Audio Monitor(s) Displays: ASUS 24" Monitor Screen Resolution: 1920x1080 Keyboard: Razer Tarantula Mouse: Razer Lachesis PSU: Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750W Case: Cooler Master Haf 932 Cooling: Fans Hard Drives: G.SKILL Phoenix Series 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3R 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA II Internet Speed: not fast enough
unfortunately to the unwitting scareware popups can be quite alarming.
my girlfriend's grandma completely freaked out over one (on a mac nonetheless) and is convinced she has a virus and will now pay money for a mac technician to look at it.
I also noticed and don't know how this happened. But my gf got one and somehow her browser was set to open that tab and site when she re-opened the browser, bringing up the false warning every time she opened her browser (FF4).
I could be mistaken about the tab thing, not sure how that came about - but it had her concerned for a moment as well.
People fall for that?
The Google Chrome boxes were OBVIOUSLY not from Chrome, seriously.
Though I will give it that, IE9 apparently has an annoyingly good warnings program. Chrome could step it up a tad.
~Lordbob
Unfortunately they do LB. In another post I mentioned a lady friend of mine who opened some page which had a flashing banner ad "CLICK ME", which she of course started to do. I warned her not to since it could be some bad program or virus. Her reply? "But it says click me!" <whistles innocently>
Computer Type: PC/Desktop System Manufacturer/Model Number: Home Built Desktop By DataTech OS: Windows 7 Ultimate X64 SP1 CPU: Intel i5-2550K, Differing ~4.4-4.8GHz No built in GPU Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 Memory: 16GB G.Skill Sniper 1866MHz @ 2133MHz 2x8GB Graphics Card: ASUS GTX650TIB-DC2OC-2GD5, (650TI Boost) Sound Card: Onboard Realtek 5-1 Monitor(s) Displays: Samsung P2570HD Screen Resolution: 1920x1080 Keyboard: E-Z Eyes, bright yellow keys with large characters Mouse: steelseries SENSEI Laser Pro Gaming PSU: Corsair HX650W Case: Inwin Dragon Rider Cooling: Hyper 212 EVO w/two Noctua fans, push-pull, @1300 RPM Hard Drives: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD for OS, 500GB Seagate Constellation (Enterprise drive) for Data Internet Speed: 48-51Mbs Mbs down, 11 Mbs up Xfinity Cable Browser: IE 10, Opera, Pale Moon if needed Antivirus: Norton Internet Security 2013 Other Info: 4 case fans, LG BluRay-RE, ASUS DVD-RW, Mr. Fusion power supply, 1.21 gigawatts.
People fall for that?
The Google Chrome boxes were OBVIOUSLY not from Chrome, seriously.
Though I will give it that, IE9 apparently has an annoyingly good warnings program. Chrome could step it up a tad.
~Lordbob
Unfortunately they do LB. In another post I mentioned a lady friend of mine who opened some page which had a flashing banner ad "CLICK ME", which she of course started to do. I warned her not to since it could be some bad program or virus. Her reply? "But it says click me!" <whistles innocently>
System Manufacturer/Model Number: Hera OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Mint 9 CPU: Intel i5-2500k Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 Pro Memory: 2x 4Gb Corsair VENGEANCE DDR3-1600 Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce N260GTX Twin Frozr Sound Card: Realtek HD OnBoard Audio Monitor(s) Displays: ASUS 24" Monitor Screen Resolution: 1920x1080 Keyboard: Razer Tarantula Mouse: Razer Lachesis PSU: Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750W Case: Cooler Master Haf 932 Cooling: Fans Hard Drives: G.SKILL Phoenix Series 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3R 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA II Internet Speed: not fast enough
unfortunately to the unwitting scareware popups can be quite alarming.
my girlfriend's grandma completely freaked out over one (on a mac nonetheless) and is convinced she has a virus and will now pay money for a mac technician to look at it.
Co-worker friend has a Macbook Pro, and got worried about similar thing. He opened Safari or something, and it popped up a fullscreen animated GIF of flashing red VIRUS and other bits on Icons..telling him his AV was out of date, and click here to buy this AV to "fix" the viruses he had.
He called me up to take a look at it, because his login password wasn't working to give him admin rights or summat to install this AV
When he arrived at my house, he opened the lid and showed me what it was doing. As soon as I saw it, I immediately noticed it was a fake .. cause all the GFX were of a XP Home computer .
unfortunately to the unwitting scareware popups can be quite alarming.
my girlfriend's grandma completely freaked out over one (on a mac nonetheless) and is convinced she has a virus and will now pay money for a mac technician to look at it.
Co-worker friend has a Macbook Pro, and got worried about similar thing. He opened Safari or something, and it popped up a fullscreen animated GIF of flashing red VIRUS and other bits on Icons..telling him his AV was out of date, and click here to buy this AV to "fix" the viruses he had.
He called me up to take a look at it, because his login password wasn't working to give him admin rights or summat to install this AV
When he arrived at my house, he opened the lid and showed me what it was doing. As soon as I saw it, I immediately noticed it was a fake .. cause all the GFX were of a XP Home computer .
I've installed MSE on a number of systems over the years and I'm not looking for alternatives (yet). Every system also has Malwarebytes (free) installed.
I do realize that malware changes often enough so that signature based AV tools have a hard time keeping up... but I wish that MSE's heuristic...