Bogus Security Alerts Aren’t From Norton

Con artists are targeting thousands of people with tech support scams that pose as security alerts from Norton Security, researchers at Symantec have found. The phony alerts pop up in the browser and urge the victim to run a quick scan of their computer. If the user clicks “OK,” they’ll see a very realistic-looking fake Norton scan running, which tells them their computer is infected. They’ll then be prompted to download an “update” for their antivirus software, which is actually a potentially unwanted application (PUA).

The scammers use HTML and JavaScript to create a very convincing illusion that a Norton scan is taking place. The source code contains several invisible HTML div elements which are progressively made visible by JavaScript code. The scammers use JavaScript’s setTimeout() function to time the appearance of the HTML elements, which contain images of a real Norton scan. The victims believe they’re seeing Norton windows popping up on their computer. In reality, it’s all happening within the browser.

While tracking this scam, the Symantec researchers discovered an unsecured attacker dashboard, which revealed that the scammers had compromised tens of thousands of victims. The dashboard shows that the attackers are paid by the volume of successful PUA installations, and this particular scam netted them at least $25,000.

The researchers emphasize that there are several red flags here that could have alerted educated users to the scam. First, files on your hard drive can’t be scanned by a website in a browser. Second, Norton scans and updates are handled through the product’s GUI, while the initial alert in this case was obviously browser-based. Additionally, the scam contained several hard-coded elements that wouldn’t have applied to every user, such as “30 days of subscription remaining.”