Fake antivirus scares Mozilla users

Cyber criminal are adopting fake antivirus as their latest tool to attack your PC. Sophos, the IT security firm has released that a fake antivirus which is a replica of Microsoft's security update, tricks users to install malicious software. This page comes only when the user uses the Mozilla's Firefox browser, whereas the authentic Microsoft update requires the use of the Internet Explorer.The fake antivirus comes with an alert on the window, as soon as the user opens the Mozilla Firefox, and a pop up window asks for the update of the antivirus. When the users install the security update, which actually contains worm, they end up installing the malicious software. Users, affected by this have complained about receiving an update notification which says "Update your Windows".

Sophos said that criminals are looking for most convincing way to increase their trap and make the users download fake antivirus.

Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, said, "Users need to be more vigilant than ever before as bogus security alerts pop-up in their browsers. Fake anti-virus attacks are big business for cybercriminals and they are investing time and effort into making them as convincing as possible. Malicious hackers are using smart social engineering tricks more and more often, and the risk is that users will be scared by a phoney warning into handing over money to fix problems that never existed in the first place".

Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor of Sophos warned users, "You should only trust security alerts in your browser if you initiated a check with Microsoft, Adobe, Sophos, or any other vendor for updates to their software."