Virus scare

[DBissett]

So I was surfing this morning and hit a site that was "female oriented" and my computer lit up with several windows I'd never seen before telling me I had been invaded. One looked like My Computer and below each drive letter it said I had dozens of trojans. A smaller window said my security had been compromised, files destroyed, personal info stolen, and said that Windows would run a mandatory virus scan via it's "partner" AVSCAN7. I was to go to the "AVSCAN7.COM" site and download the scanner. I was scared and suspicious at the same time, since I run Vipre and it didn't say anything at all. Also, the drive letters weren't quite right, and I couldn't close any of these windows. So I disconnected from the net, managed to close all these windows after several attempts, and ran Vipre and then Panda. Neither found anything, save for a Doubleclick cookie. I'm thinking this was a false alarm designed to infect the computer if I ran the install.exe file that was supposedly a scanner, or an over the top attempt to sell me a scanner. Could this be right? Anyone ever seen anything like this? What's the risk here that personal info really was stolen? (I googled and found some software called AVSCAN, but nothing for AVSCAN7, or AVSCAN7.com.)

 

[Crusty]

Sounds like the infamous Antivirus2007 spyware, it's just that... spyware!

 

[law9933]

I guess a scare trick, but what if it isn't?

MalwareBytes, SUPERAntispyware, a-squared are real good free scanners. (update)

 

[MrChad]

If you didn't click any of the links in the pop up windows, you are probably safe, but as law9933 mentioned, you may want to run some trusted malware scanners to be certain.

This is a typical tactic of spyware/malware to trick users into downloading/installing their software. They present web pages that look like local Windows Explorer windows and flash dire warnings that your system has been compromised. Your instinct in this situation was correct: close the windows without clicking any links and do not agree to install anything or have an unsolicited web site scan your computer.