Is Buggy: Scammer „Technicians” Might Abuse An Error Message!

General news News PC PC News Tech Tech Reviews 11/06/2019

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TECH NEWS – If you use Mozilla Firefox, due to a bug, your browser might lock up after displaying an error message.

The error message claims that our Windows is a pirated copy and that it got hacked. „Please stop and do not close the PC… The registry key of your computer is locked. Why did we block your computer? The Windows registry key is illegal. The Windows desktop is using pirated software. This Windows desktop sends viruses over the Internet. This Windows desktop is hacked. We block this computer for your safety,” the message says. It then displays a toll-free phone number that we should call within five minutes, or our computer would be „disabled.” (They’d probably request money to „fix the issue.”)

ArsTechnica says the bug is also present in the macOS version of Firefox. How can you get rid of the error message? Not by calling the number. Instead, do the usual Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and close Firefox from the Task Manager, or use Force Quit on Mac. However, if you have the restore tabs feature enabled, you should disconnect from the Internet. Otherwise, you’d get into a never-ending loop. Just close the suspicious tab while you’re offline, and you’re good to go.

Jérôme Segura, Malwarebytes’ head of threat intelligence, says Mozilla has been already informed of the bug, and they replied by saying they are working on a fix. However, there is no official announcement just yet.

This error project might be coming from India, seeing how the error message is written (and we can already hear the word desktop pronounced as dextop in their accent…). That country is known for running scammers posing as Microsoft technicians, saying they have an issue to fix, even though there is nothing wrong with our computer. They’d take control over our PC, and then we’d have to pay them to get it back. On this YouTube channel, you can see a lot of the scammers getting caught.

Don’t be fooled.

WCCFTech

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Angyal Anikó

Anikó, our news editor and communication manager, is more interested in the business side of the gaming industry. She worked at banks, and she has a vast knowledge of business life. Still, she likes puzzle and story-oriented games, like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, which is her favourite title. She also played The Sims 3, but after accidentally killing a whole sim family, swore not to play it again. (For our office address, email and phone number check out our IMPRESSUM)