But with Adobe's media player a year into its long overdue retirement, criminals have had to look elsewhere for a convincing cover story, and where better than perhaps the most frequently updated software of them all, the web browser? Browsers have an almost frenetic update schedule, and many users understand that installing regular updates is a normal and important part of their everyday use. Flash provided just the right kind of patsy: It was famous for its security holes, and new updates were released almost every month.
A convincingly-branded message that tells users they need to update their out of date software taps into all the good security messaging users have soaked up, it gives them a reason to install strange software from the Internet, and it carries exactly the right mixture of implied threat and urgency that social engineers like.įor years, fake Flash updates were a fixture of web-based malware campaigns. Applying software updates promptly is arguably the single most useful thing you can do to keep yourself secure online, and vendors, experts, pundits, and blogs like ours, never let users forget it!Īnd because it's good advice that's easy to follow, cybercriminals like to use fake software updates to con users.įake software updates have been a go-to tactic for getting users to download malware for many years.
Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the last twenty years, you've probably heard the one about "keeping your software up to date".
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