While some may believe they’re invulnerable on their computer, a new threat has surfaced which specifically targets Mozilla’s Firefox browser. Obviously computer threats have been a problem since world wide web was created. however scareware such as this is significantly more rare. Instead of portraying itself as a company and placing a popup on the user’s computer, this scareware threat pretends to be Mozilla Firefox itself protecting you from a threat.
Windows Club reported that clicking on the start protection button as displayed in the image above, installs a program on the users´s computer and it picks up a fake virus during a supposed scan and asks the user to pay $80 in order for the program to be able to remove the virus.
Scareware has become a prominent threat particularly due to the lack of technical knowledge that most computers have. Having a specific target audience is not a new concept though as we’ve seen with money phishing emails which rely on the recipient to be associated with that banking corporation.
The word of advice on this to anyone surfing the internet and getting messages the same or indeed similar to this, is to be careful on what you click on.Firefox is not equipped with a virus scanner itself, so if you see something like this, close the browser and conduct a quick scan just to be sure.