- - Bogus Security Software a Growing Threat. Hackers are increasingly hiding viruses in bogus computer security software to trick people into installing treacherous programs on machines, Microsoft has warned. The software giant said in a security intelligence report that "rogue security software" is a growing threat as hackers take advantage of people's fears of worms such as Conficker.
Rogue security software, referred to as "scareware," pretends to check computers for viruses, and then claims to find dangerous infections that the program will fix for a fee. "The rogue software lures them into paying for protection that, unknown to them, is actually malware offering little or no real protection, and is often designed to steal personal information," Microsoft said. Two "rogue families" of scareware were detected in 1.5 million computers. Another form of scareware was found on 4.4 million computers, a rise of 66% from the previous six-month period. "That means when users downloaded the software, they probably gave away credit card numbers and got infected," Microsoft said. "That's a double hit."
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