If you have a PC (or even a Mac), you may know someone who has been a victim of malware that pretends to be a virus scan. What make this a nasty piece of software is that it makes your system unusable until it is removed. Let’s show you what it looks like and how to remove it.
What does it look like?
The video below shows a sample website that is trying to get you to infect your system.
Prevention
A keen eye will notice that the ‘virus scan’ is actually happening inside your web browser and not your PC. The site is trying to trick you into installing the software that will really infect your system. So what do you do? Well, just close your browser (if you can). If not reboot your PC or more advanced users can kill the web browser process via CTRL-ALT-DEL. Just do not click on anything or agree to download any file. If you follow the above directions, you are safe and no infection will occur.
Removal
If by accident you panicked and installed the ‘anti-virus’ software there are a few ways to remove it. The most basic way is to have your IT staff reboot the PC and then log into it as a different user that has admin privledges. Once logged in, run a Malwarebytes to remove the software. I also recommend running CCleaner to clean up temp files where more malware may lurk.
If you cannot log in as another user, boot the system into safe mode and run the software above.
NOTE: Sometimes the malware removal may remove how the system understands how to execute files. If this happens you will need to download a tool that will rebuild that connection from another PC and run it from a flash drive on the repaired system.
If you have any questions or need assistance in removal, future prevention, or employee education please contact Wireguided.
-Tim
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