Scammers Exploit Chrome Bug Forcing Users to Pay Fake Customer Care Executives
Jul. 5, 2018In spite of Google’scrackdownon malicious and intrusive ads, scammers have been exploiting a bug in Chrome – and possibly, even Mozilla Firefox – to fool users. These scammers usuallymislead users by posing as Microsoft’s official tech supportand then asking them to pay for the fix.
The exploit, which was earlier discovered in February, locks users into a webpage crying wolf about the ISP blocking users. This is actually accomplished bydownloading an executable file on a user’s PC without their permission. Soon after the file is downloaded, it installs in the background without the user’s permission by taking advantage of a flaw in Google Chrome.
As a result, thebrowser becomes unresponsivein a few seconds, with a dialog prompting users to call (an actually phony) phone number, which it claims to belong to Microsoft. When panicking users call the number, con artists dupe them by posing as Microsoft’s tech support andforcing them to share their credit card detailsin exchange for fixing the issue. The executable file is usually downloaded by clicking on bogus or misleading ads.
The issue had apparently beenfixed in Chrome 65which came out in Chrome 65 but seems to have reappeared with the latest version i.e.Chrome 67. Anti-virus providerMalwarebytes, which first found the bug in February reports that Mozilla could be susceptible to it as well.
Meanwhile,Bleeping Computerconfirms that Vivaldi and Brave browsers also freezes on the exploit while Opera stays frozen but only for a short period.Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer were found not to be affectedby the malicious program.
Google has acknowledged the problemand said that it is fixing the issue while Mozilla is also investigating the impact on its browsers. But as a user, one must try to avoid click-baits and too-good-to-be-true advertisements. As far as this flaw is concerned, you can simply kill the browser using Task Manager on Windows or Force Quit on Mac.
