A dangerous and fake Security is circulating on the internet Essentials Antivirus from Microsoft, which aims to extort money from you.
The company today published a warning to explain that this fake Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus is actually a scam detected as SupportScam: MSIL / Hicurdismos.A and its sole purpose is to convince you that there is something wrong on your computer to pay some money for the villains to make repairs.
As a reminder, Microsoft's Security Essentials Antivirus is one free antivirus of the company and is aimed at users of Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows.
The first suspect fact about this fake antivirus is that it targets Windows 8 and Windows 10 while the actual package can only be installed on Windows 7 and earlier. Microsoft Security Essentials has been replaced for Windows 8 and 10 by Windows Defender and is pre-installed on all systems.
After installation, the fake package creates a blue screen which contains some evidence that it is all just a malicious attempt to steal your money. The blue screen displays contact information (eg a phone number), whereas Microsoft does not include such details in error information. In this way, users who see this blue screen are prompted to call the phone number and ask for technical support of their computer paying a price of course.
According to Microsoft, any user who makes the communication suggested by the fake blue screen encourages thugs to place more malware in his system under the guise of support tools or software that is supposed to correct a problem that does not exist.
Also note that the initial package that prompts you to download and run it on your computer is called setup.exe, but Microsoft never uses that name to install or upgrade Security Essentials. Then, if you look at the properties of the file, the publisher is not Microsoft, and Windows SmartScreen also shows a warning saying "the publisher of setup.exe could not be verified".
