Malware Scareware
I spent the morning trying to get rid of an annoying spyware / malware / piece of sh*t program on Ayesha’s PC laptop called Total Security. I don’t know what to call it since I don’t have to worry about malicious, marauding applications on my Mac 
I have to give the guys behind Total Security credit, despite the fact that what they are doing is the computer program version of left wing / right wing political scare tactic campaigns, which I despise.
It reminds me of George Bush’s “Michael Dukakis pals around with murderers” ads when I was little. They went something like this, “Michael Dukakis let Willie Horton out of jail. Willie Horton is a murderer. Therefore, Michael Dukakis likes murderers. Do you want a guy who pals around with murderers as your president? We don’t. Vote for George Bush, tough on murderers, soft on babies.”
Total Security kind of works the same way. Despite being an awful malware program that welcomed itself into your home without you asking it in, then bringing in several suitcases for a longer stay, it then spends all its automated energy trying to freak you into thinking that your computer is corrupted with all sorts of malicious viruses. In reality, the only virus on your computer is Total Security.
It makes every effort to push you in the direction of buying its spyware removal software, initiating fake scans of your computer for fake viruses and prompting you to “buy now” to save your computer from irreparable damage.
It also blocks you from going to any site or launching any program that might help to find and remove Total Security. For example, try going to Norton’s anti-virus site. Get a freak out big red letter alert “danger, the site you are trying to visit is infected.” Then watch yourself get redirected to the much safer Total Security purchase page where you can safely enter all your credit card information to buy their safe security product.
I thought of the mafia and their “protection” racket. Give us money to protect you from bad things happening to you. If you don’t give us money we will make sure bad things definitely happen to you. Extortion at its finest.
Interestingly, there was an article in the NY Times today about Microsoft going after these types of bogus companies. This is one example where I hope Microsoft is successful in a lawsuite. These guys should be castrated for their virtual extortion racket. That’s really what it is.
Tim Cranton, Microsoft’s associate general counsel, talks about Microsoft’s legal efforts against what they call malvertising.
For those reading this because they are infected and just did a google search for some weird new program on your computer called Total Security, I would tell you to go here:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-total-security
But unfortunately Total Security will block you from doing so 
Fortunately, I had my Mac open as well, so could read the instructions on the site that Total Security is blocking me from visiting because it explains how to remove Total Security.
The first thing to do is to download the following file, which will help you kill processes running on your computer (like Total Security).
Then change the file name of the downloaded file to iexplore.exe. I’m not sure why this name change is necessary. Then launch the application. The instructions told me when I launch the application to look for a process with a name like tsc.exe, but I couldn’t find one. Instead, I watched to see which processes were most active, especially when I clicked on the Total Security application. When I did, a process that was a number, like 43597.exe, immediately increased its CPU usage. I highlighted that process, then hit the red kill button at the top of the process monitoring program.
Once you’ve killed the Total Security application from running, you still need to remove it and all its annoying files, located all over your computer.
Now you can go to the site to follow the rest of the instructions:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-total-security
The final instructions are to download a real malware removal program, which will search your computer for the unwanted files and help you remove them.
Peter Cervieri is co-founder of and Director of Business Development for ScribeMedia.Org. He has many fetishes. Among them is collecting business cards.
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