Cybercriminals leveraging social media is now basically a given, especially with users’ current dedication to social media (specifically on social networks). Actually, we’ve reported quite a few instances that prove how cybercriminals used Twitter for their operation, most especially in spamming.

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Twitter Kit Out to Make Twitter a Spammers’ Dream

June 11th kicks off the 2010 FIFA World Cup , and not surprisingly, we’re seeing a rise in related spam. It’s still just a small percentage of spam overall (under 2%) but when comparing the first three days from the last six months, we see a doubling in volume and 74 times the number of hits on related keywords from January to June. As the tournament continues from June to July 11th, we expect to see more related threats.

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2010 FIFA World Cup is Approaching

We have regularly blogged about cybercriminals misuse of newsworthy events, in order to gain profit.  In the past 24 hours, TrendLabs has tracked multiple FAKEAV attacks that try and trick users searching for help following the recent McAfee update 5958 incident.  This determination by cybercriminals, to cause further problems and inconvenience to innocent end users and businesses is, in many respects, not surprising.  We at Trend Micro, are keen to help users identify these FAKEAV scams before they can be affected by them. In a recent post on how blackhat-SEO-leads-to-FAKEAV post Doorway Pages and Other FAKEAV Stealth Tactics , Threat Response Engineer Norman Ingal described important telltale signs of malicious search results , specifically that their URLs follow this pattern:   This can help users spot malicious results

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Cybercriminals Ride on the Back of Security Woes with FAKEAV

Cybercriminals employ different but complementary techniques when it comes to propagating FAKEAV.

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Doorway Pages and Other FAKEAV Stealth Tactics

Google’s Online Security Blog had a very interesting post yesterday regarding fake antivirus. Google has been working to protect their users since March 2007, when they first discovered fake AV.

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Tax Day Freebies

It seems that cybercriminals use every bit of news or information worthy of public interest to spread FAKEAV malware. This time around, FAKEAV binaries are being delivered via news about the recently concluded “2010 Kids’ Choice Awards.” The following keywords lead to poisoned Google search results (see Figure 1): Kids Choice Awards 2010 Live Kids Choice Awards 2010 Air Date Kids Choice Awards 2010 Date Kids Choice Awards 2010 Logo Kids Choice Awards 2010 Performances Kids Choice Awards 2010 Performers Kids Choice Awards 2010 Vote Kids Choice Awards 2010 Sweepstakes Clicking poisoned links leads users to a fake antivirus alert asking them if they want to protect their systems (see Figure 2).

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Kids’ Choice Awards Used for FAKEAV

News of a twin bombing attack in Russia shocked the world on Monday morning as two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in Moscow subway stations. According to news reports, the attacks killed at least 38 people and wounding more than 60. Jumping a the chance to make profit from terrible events, cybercriminals quickly picked up on the news and used this for their own malicious attacks.

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Moscow Subway Explosions Result to FAKEAV

Yesterday, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake shook the Philippine capital, causing a bit of concern among its inhabitants and their relatives from the rest of the country and abroad. As such, many tuned in to the Web for the latest news and updates on this incident. As expected, cybercriminals were one of the first in line to provide information about the earthquake rigged with rogue antivirus applications.

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Another Earthquake, Another FAKEAV

Recent news of a swimsuit mishap involving a popular Philippine TV personality, Anne Curtis , spread like wildfire when members of the press captured the said incident and circulated supposed videos over the Web. The incident happened last Sunday while the Australian-born TV host and movie actress was performing a dance number while shooting live for a local noontime TV show.

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Anne Curtis’ “Nip-Slip” Leads to FAKEAV

The Saturday night boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey was one of the most awaited sports events of 2010. It should not be a surprise then that cybercriminals took advantage of it to spread malware. Another blackhat search engine optimization (SEO) attack led users who wanted to watch the fight online via live video streams (using the search phrase “manny pacquiao vs joshua clottey live streaming”) to malicious sites.

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Pacquiao-Clottey Live Streams Lead to FAKEAV