Clever Marketing And Aggressive Attacks Equal Nasty Rogue
September 6, 2011 Computer Safety Tip
Master Utilities is a scam, but a cleverly marketed scam at that. This clone of FakeHDD uses advanced attack measures to 
forcefully ingrain itself in its victims’ PCs to ultimately rip them off. These attack tactics, as with its forerunner, range from denying the user access to his PC applications and blocking the Internet connection. The rogue makes reference to scanning the system’s Hard Drive, RAM Memory and Registry for errors, which it simply cannot. it will attempt to make it as difficult as possible to get rid of Master Utilities by hijacking search engine results and injecting infected links into the SERPs when users attempt to research Master Utilities. One such link reported on is:
www.removeonline.com/how-to-remove-master-utilities-or-masterutilities…
This seemingly legitimate link gets flagged by security software which prevents it from loading, and states that it is a suspicious domain.
Master Utilities employs a clever and aggressive online marketing campaign to market and distribute itself. Methods used vary between infecting online flash ads and tricking users into downloading its rubbish software by panicking them with fake online scanners. Other infection tactics include Master Utilities using aggressive browser hijackers which forcefully redirect users to compromised sites where Master Utilities is then dropped into the system through drive-by downloads.
Once the rogue embeds itself into the system it will start the attack by initiating a fake system scan every time the user logs on to Windows. This fake scan will immediately be followed by fake and nonsensical system notifications such as the following:
Critical Error
Hard Drive not found. Missing hard driveCritical Error
RAM memory usage is critically high. RAM memory failure.
As is evidenced by these rubbish alerts, Master Utilities is a fake defragmenter as it reports on improbable errors which aren’t even possible. Master Utilities will further attempt to make the PC inoperable by blocking the user’s access to his PC applications. It does this by spamming the user with falsely generated system alerts each time he attempts to launch an application:
System Error
An error occurred while reading system files. Run a system diagnostic utility to check your hard disk drive for errors.
In order to disable these symptoms, enter the following activation key:
1203978628012489708290478989147
Master Utilities was designed exclusively to rip consumers off. It will cause permanent damage to your PC while offering no benefit to the system. It is for this reason that you have to ruthlessly and aggressively annihilate Master Utilities from your PC without further delay.
