Prevailent Fake Anti-Virus (Fake AV) Products Becoming New Internet Threat

A recent (Wednesday, April 14, 2010) blog post from Google's Online Security Team discussed a new and emerging security threat on the web. For years, Google has attempted to detect internet threats that were site-based and announce or forcibly protect against them. Vulnerabilities in web browsers and popular plugins have helped sustain and distribute internet threats such as the Conficker virus for instance. One of scariest issues with such internet threats is that they require no or little user action in order for infection to occur--they permit the adversary to execute code on a user’s computer without their knowledge.

One of the high level concerns for internet security is the popularity of Fake anti-virus software. Google's Online Security Blog discusses the subject in an article entitled "The Rise of Fake Anti-Virus." Protecting against fake anti-virus software has become an increasing priority for Google's security team since they were first discovered in March 2007.

Google has conducted a large study of this web security threat and plans to present it's findings later this month. As a spoiler to the study, Google has announced that it has discovered over 11,000 domains involved in Fake AV distribution. However, it also stated that fake AV distribution is on the apparent decline.

Google's innovation in internet security has profoundly impacted the industry. Although Google has been a stalwart user security and information confidentiality, many are deeply concerned that Google may be a long term risk to Internet user privacy as they amass a historical wealth of information on businesses, individuals, consumer trends and much more.

Source: Online Security Blog The latest news and insights on security and safety on the Internet: https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/04/rise-of-fake-anti-virus.html