Fergie's Tech Blog

Malware: One Victim's Story

Thomas Claburn writes on InformationWeek:

When you have spinal and liver cancer, computer infections are the least of your worries. But even the least of worries can diminish your quality of life.

Tim, a resident of Aberdeen, Wash., just wanted to play some online games, his friend Sharon explained over the phone on Tuesday. Sharon provided her last name and address, but asked that it not be published because Tim and she are dealing with identity theft, in addition to cancer.

Tim, she explained, saw a TV ad for an online bingo site, bigtimebingo.net, while watching Fox News recently. Upon visiting the site, Tim lost control of his computer.

"My friend loves online games," said Sharon. "I'm always telling him to be careful. But when you see it advertised on TV, you figure it's safe."

Tim had been redirected to malware-alarm dot com, one of several variant Web domains associated with the MalwareAlarm rogue antivirus software. The site receives 31,147 unique U.S. monthly visitors, according to Quantcast.

posted by Fergie @ 2/15/2008 08:24:00 PM