antivirus

Fake Antivirus!

Josh Gordon

May 6, 2011 • 1 min read

I was poking around Facebook when I saw How-To Geek post this link to a thing about fake antivirus for Mac OSX. I was curious what the attack would look like on my Linux machine.

I Googled the same thing they did, and found the same picture they did. (Mine was on page 5, but I found it anyways.)

Turns out whoever set this up wasn't clever enough to set up an attack for Linux. :)

This is what I got.

After I clicked OK, it did a brief "scan," and told me I had a bunch of viruses.

If you click "Remove all," "Cancel," or the red X, it tries to download software on your machine.

Of course, this story has a moral. NEVER DOWNLOAD ANTIVIRUS FROM SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T TRUST!

This means you shouldn't trust those ads that say "You're computer has 20 bazillion virusses! Download new Antivirus now!"

Here's a list of antivirus that I have some level of trust in:

AVG
Avast
Microsoft security essentials

If you're buying AV at a brick and mortar store (or even Amazon!) there's a good chance it's legitimate and not fake.

Better than all of these options -- Just run Linux!

'Till later,

Josh

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