It's not an antivirus as you may be tempted to believe

Dec 18, 2007 22:06 GMT  ·  By

Viruses simply hate antiviruses and it's obvious why. They're somehow like the police and the criminals in the real life. But, they can easily turn from enemies into friends. Somehow... Here's today's example: ExpertAntivirus, an antivirus that is supposed to protect your computer is actually being used to steal your money and infect your computer. How smart is this?

Many users may be tempted to believe this is the best antivirus they have ever seen, but in fact, it might represent the worst computer infection they have ever had. 2Spyware.com today wrote that ExpertAntivirus can easily reach a computer and assault the user with numerous alerts and pop-ups, urging him to buy the application in order to clean the infected system. Classic! The rogue technology even modifies the browser settings to get the users to the buying website, like the annoying advertisements and the pop-ups wouldn't be enough.

"The pop-ups are masked to look like security reports. If a user clicks on such a pop-up, web browser is redirected to ExpertAntivirus website that urges to buy this malicious tool. ExpertAntivirus is not capable of protecting a computer; it's a computer parasite itself. Do not buy nor download this software. ExpertAntivirus may also install additional malwares on the infected machine", 2Spyware.com wrote in the advisory published today.

Usually, you can easily find out if you installed ExpertAntivirus on your computer, by looking for the ExpertAntivirus.exe file, which is usually dropped by the malware. However, the removal is not so simple, because you have to remove several registry entries that are created by the infection in order to be sure it is executed every time the operating system is loaded.

You can find all the removal details straight here on the 2Spyware.com security notification.