As we know, proper marketing is crucial for any product to grow. In the case of online activity, several potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) like Adware-MemWatcher, Adware-Look2Me and Adware-Apropos have come up with different strategies. These latest strategies include monitoring a user’s browsing habits to better know the user’s interest and according to that, display various pop up ads.

Here is a case where a PUP named Malwarewipe is getting marketed by a trojan called Puper. The strategy begins with Puper dropping its supporting files on user’s system for further action and then displaying hoax balloon messages as shown below:

The trojan will often direct more hoax messages at the user about their system being vulnerable:

This trojan has a wide variety of hoax virus alert messages to make the user feel more insecure, as further shown:

If the user clicks on the OK button, the trojan directs the user’s browser to a MalwareWipe page, similar to the one shown below. This is detected as the potentially unwanted program called Adware-Malwarewipe.

We caution web users to be aware of these hoax alert messages seen while surfing the web as we continue to protect our customers against such social engineering attacks.