H McAfee reports that a software company with more than 50.000 downloads in websites As the Download.com διανέμει web browser hijacker και malware.
Researcher Santosh Revankar reports that Lavians Inc redirects browsers to pages showing apparent problems faced by the company, and then tries to determine costs.
The technique comes straight from the black hat scam manual and is used by web scammers who take advantage of the garbage spread to make money from ads by serving all kinds of malware on users' computers.
Lavians Inc. has 19 add-ons hosted on Download.com and 24 on Brothersoft.com, along with the apps available from its own website.
Revankar reports that "several other" Lavians Inc. applications have been repackaged with malicious content and are intended to infect as many users as possible.
"We have discovered many Lavians Inc files that look like legitimate applications but can put you at serious risk," says Revankar.
"We've noticed that Lavians Inc is repackaging clean applications with a browser hijacker to increase its visibility."
A hash check of Virus Total in Lavians driver for Dell machines displays ad trojans that are recognized by ESET, Microsoft, Ikarus, and Antiy-AVL.
As for large software download sites (like download.com), they continue to be a hateful web relic in INFOSEC circles, as security checks are often inadequate, while bundler installers make direct efforts to trick users into installing unwanted applications increase the chances of attacking PCs.
