Tamper tantrum
By John Leyden, 23rd November 2009
Rogue anti-virus scammers have tainted search results for Chromium OS - the open source version of Google's Chrome OS - in a bid to expose surfers hunting the web operating system to a fake anti-virus scan scam instead. Search terms such as "chromium os download" point to sites featuring scripts that redirect stray surfers towards scareware scam portals. These sites falsely report that users PCs are loaded with malware before pushing users to download a clean-up tool little or no utility. The SecureKeeper utility offered through the scam uses a series of aggressive and misleading tricks to coerce people into paying $49.95 to purchase a licence, as explained in a blog post by security firm eSoft here. Something very similar happened when Google released its Wave collaboration tool. In both cases, surfers are only redirected to scareware-punting portals in cases where they arrive as bobby-trapped URLs via Google search results. Both the Google Wave and Chromium Os scams refer to a product or service that is not yet generally available, a factor that arguably increases the potency of scams.
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