Fake antivirus or more precise - fake antimalware, or rogue security programs - is a generic description for all types of malware that pretend to be protection software against virus, spyware, Trojans and other types of malware. In reality however, fake antimalware is malicious software. The most used spreading mechanism is drive-by infections from visiting web sites.
One popular technique is to manipulate search engines to display search engine results using search words that are "hot" to display web sites that are infected by fake antimalware. Such words are f.ex. big media events and other issues that people usually search for. Another technique is propagation through malicious advertisements.
The idea behind Fake Antivirus is to trick infected users into purchasing the fake antivirus product by displaying information that the computer is infected even if it is not. Some of the rogue security programs may display product names or logos in an apparently unlawful attempt to impersonate legitimate product. Some versions also disable legitimate antivirus programs, and block Internet access to security sites. The fake antimalware products often download other malware components, which in turn may download other and update themselves with new/updated modules. The result is that the malware is difficult to remove and may be quite persistent in its attempts to convince the users to buy the product.
Removal: Norman's antivirus products are in general able to remove all malicious software that is detected. Some malware, however, uses techniques that the general product does not remove sufficiently. Therefore, the free product Norman Malware Cleaner is most widely used.
