Published by Blanca Carton, September 2011

Throughout the year, rogueware (fake antivirus programmes) continue to cause damage. What’s more, the trend seems to be on the increase, as stated in PandaLabs trimestral Report.

After warning users of the presence of rogueware targeting Mac OS users, PandaLabs now reports a new rogueware which simulates to be an antivirus program based on the Collective Intelligence (system which continously gathers and scans viruses and other threats for the community). This fake antivirus is called Open Cloud Antivirus.

As you can see in the images below, the cyber-criminals try to sell their “product” by offering you a fake security cloud. Do not click their links in order to activate the protection!


Remember that these fake antivirus are malicious applications which, pretending to be an evaluation version, try to deceive you by making you believe your PC has been infected by several viruses. In order to do so, constant warning alerts such as: Your PC is infected with 32 viruses! Buy our programme to be protected! are displayed on the screen. If you accept and pay, will trigger the nightmare! The cyber-criminals will have achieved the following:

Your money and what is even worse, your personal data including your credit card number. Open door to bank fraud!

How to prevent these attacks?

  • If you don’t have an antivirus programme installed, make sure you always install legitimate software. Check with your IT provider or refer to specialised and reputed forums.
  • It is vital that you install a real antivirus – Panda is real 🙂 – either for Windows or for Mac.
  • If you have unfortunately been victim of rogueware, you can always ask for Technical Support at the Panda Security Forum.

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