Tech Support Scammers may freeze your browser
Tech support scams come in many forms; from basic popup messages or fake screenshots posted on websites to sophisticated operations that try to block users from leaving a site or closing a popup.
Malwarebytes discovered a new sophisticated tech support scam operation recently that affects Chrome, Firefox, Brave and probably other web browsers as well.
The scam uses a public API that browser's support to overload it with file downloads to increase CPU and memory usage so that the browser freezes and becomes unresponsive.
The Blob constructor coupled with the window.navigator.msSaveOrOpenBlob method lets you save files locally and, as you may have guessed, is what is being abused here.
A script is executed when a user visits a specially prepared web page. This script initiates more than 2000 downloads at once which freeze the browser so that it cannot be closed anymore through normal means.
While some browsers have protections in place to block too many downloads from happening at once, Malwarebytes notes that the initiation of downloads happens so quickly that the prompt never displays. This happened on Windows 7 and Windows 10 systems running the latest stable version of Google Chrome.
The scam page in question displays a prompt to the user that you see on the screenshot above. This message attempts to scare the user by stating that information such as the Facebook login, credit card details or photos on the PC, is being stolen.
A "Call Microsoft" call to action is attached to the prompt to get affected users to call the listed support number which is not an official Microsoft number of course. Users should not call that number under any circumstances.
Malwarebytes notes that the scam attacks users through so-called malvertising campaigns. This involves abusing advertisement on websites to trick users into opening the support scam page.
Any content blocker worth its salt should block these ads and the script that runs on the support scam page. If you are affected, try opening the Task Manager to close Chrome this way, or use the power or reset button on the computer and restart the PC afterward.
Now You: Have you been affected by malvertising campaigns in the past?
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- Malwarebytes 3.2 promises better memory usage and stability
- Malwarebytes for Firefox extension
- You should disable automatic downloads in Chrome right now
- WebAPI Manager: limit website access to Web APIs
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.