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Rogue attack hits thousands of websites
2011-04-04
Thousands of websites have been hit by a rogue attack that falsely warns visitors that their computers have been corrupted by a virus and urges them to buy fake anti-virus software.
According to the computer security blog Websense.com, more than 500,000 domains and almost 3 million pages have been corrupted by the so-called Lizamoon exploit, which works by injecting a single line of code into the target web sites.
Users are shown a number of threats supposedly on their computer, but the fake anti-virus programme, Windows Stability Centre, won't remove them until the user pays up, in a "very traditional rogue AV scam," wrote Websense researcher Patrik Runald, who has been following the attack.
While 47 per cent of the infected sites are in the US, victims have also been reported in Britain, Kuwait, India, Australia, Turkey, Brazil, Israel, Mexico, Taiwan and Chile, among others, according to Websense, which called it the most prevalent SQL injection attack ever.
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