Pandalabs spotted yesterday a bunch of nearly 3000 hits of email messages containing Microsoft Update KB910721 which seems to be a virus in an email attachment. The email projects itself to be from Microsoft Support Team containing Outlook recent update and the steps to install it. The fake security patch attached in the email is a zip file contains Bredolab.Y virus.
If you run this file, the virus will get itself silently installed and also its bringing a friend in their family called SecurityTool, a Rogue Antivirus. Similar flavor of this kind had been got caught in the mid 2009 with the same KB article. One thing you have to stick it in your mind is that “Microsoft will never send you any updates or patches to your email”.
Courtesy: Panda Security
New Rogues are created almost daily and we stay on top with them in removing it. This is not new to us. Rogues are becoming epidemic in the malware academy and do not seem to be slowing down. In 2009 Kaspersky identified about 20,00 samples where the developers are from the countries that don’t have a strong policy on cyber crime.
Rogue Software’s created are mainly focusing to generate huge amounts of revenue. These fake software’s are promoted through affiliates where bad guys will use any means to get these programs installed on a victims computer. This includes silent installation of a malware and fake scanners to trick users to think they are infected.
New methodologies and campaigns are created among bad software creators. Sophos recently spotted that a Rogue Antivirus efficiency is more than the genuine products. They are good at customer service too. For example, after the installation of Rogue software if an unsatisfied customer wants a refund he/she will get a message similar to this: 
Don’t ever call those scammers as that will cause you to worry much more than the 50$ you have wasted on the sadly done purchase. Courtesy: Sophos.
I know how Tech Support Techies work hard in troubleshooting various windows and security related problems on a daily basis. For helping us, various vendors are coming up with certain tools to make the job little bit easier. Microsoft, a Technology Giant will always find new ways in exploring and bringing up new tools and resources to help users to fix their own problems in Windows.
Microsoft Fix it is an online automated troubleshooting solution to diagnose common windows problems in Vista SP2 and XP SP3. It doesn’t support the latest Windows 7 and Server side OS, they came with automated troubleshooting by default when something goes wrong.
Fix It fixes common system problems like CD/DVD read/write errors, printing errors, problems with sound devices, maintenance and performance issues. This step from Microsoft is to automate manual steps in KB Articles so it will easy for the end-user and the troubleshooting expert to fix problems quickly.
This Automated Troubleshooting services will scan the PC and find out the causes of the problems and automatically fixes it. If the problem isn’t fixed it also provide other resources to fix it.
You can find some common resolved issues here for all products and also try Fix it in the Vista Sidebar Gadget too.