Senator Scott Brown's Cosmopolitan Magazine Nude Pictures Arouse Fake Antivirus Infections

US got hit by a massive wave of infections due to Trojan.FakeAV.ABT , fraudulously linked by the 19^th of January Massachusetts elections topic. Data provided by BitDefender's Real-Time Virus Reporting System shows that in North America, the number of systems infected with this Trojan, increased -just before the elections day (the 18^th of January) with almost 8%, while the number of infected files raised nearly 13%.

Just in the last two days, the number of the infected systems severely grew in Canada: with 62% on the 19^th of January and with 14% on the 20^th of January. The same ascending trend for infections can be observed in UK - the number of infected systems grew with more than 29%, while the number of the infected files with almost 53%; for France, the number of infected systems increased by 23%, while the number of the infected files with about 32%. In Romania, the number of infected systems raised more than 11%.

The following day, the Sexiest Man of the Year 1982 and his nude pictures in Cosmopolitan Magazine - the same Senator Scott Brown - not only that stirred women's imagination, but got the interest of malware creators too. The latter thought to exploit the volcanic news to spread another fake antivirus: Trojan.FakeAV.XP

Instead of spicy pictures, the user receives messages of false infection on his/her computer in order to make him/her buy the fake antivirus product.

The rogue antivirus resembles the program suite from the operating system and on its installation the user can notice the following image:

Once onto the system, it creates a startup registry value "Enterprise Suite" in order to run every time the operating system starts. It damages the content of several systems files, delivering pop-up windows with fake infections, while requiring user to buy a license for it.

To protect your systems and data and avoid compromising your systems and data, follow the five security tips below:

• first and foremost have legitimate antivirus software installed.
• install and activate a reliable antimalware, firewall solution and spam filter, such as those provided by BitDefender.
• do not download software that claims to be free or anything else unless you completely trust the source.
• do not get fooled of fake video players that require "codecs" and Web scanners that pretend to disinfect your computer.
• always scan your downloads before launching them.