Honor Among Thieves? Definitely Not.

Misleading application, rogue software, fake AV: call it what you will, it’s everywhere. The authors of these applications are pumping them out by the hundreds, fooling many Internet surfers, and in the process they’re making big bucks out of it. In fact, as many of our readers will be well aware by now, it is the focus of a white paper Symantec has just released entitled Symantec Report on Rogue Security Software.
So if there are so many of these things, why should one called Windows Enterprise Defender be any different from the rest? Firstly, it tries to pass itself off as Windows Defender, which is a legitimate security product released by Microsoft. Obviously the name is similar but so is the GUI:

Notice the castle wall on the top-right hand side of the screen, which is similar to the legitimate product. Also notice the “Full Protection Activation Registration” icon on the top-left hand side, which looks and sounds like the real Microsoft Genuine Advantage Program.
Secondly, on the website that hosts this misleading application (detected by Symantec as Trojan.FakeAV) the “awards” that the product has supposedly won are displayed. The “packaging” (of course it isn’t sold physically; the only way to obtain this fake antivirus software is to download it) displays the word “Windows” prominently in the centre and the (continue reading...)