Tech support scammers ‘lock’ Chrome

[Also posted to AVIEN.]

For Malwarebytes, Jérôme Segura continues to fight the good fight against support scammers by warning us that ‘Tech support scammers find new way to jam Google Chrome.’ (If you saw this when it first appeared, note that it has been updated since.) By abusing an API, the scammers manage to freeze the browser in the hope that users will be panicked into calling the fake ‘helpline’ advertised on the pop-up or pop-under that accompanies the freeze.

However, he observes:

Since most of these browser lockers are distributed via malvertising, an effective mitigation method is to use an ad-blocker. As a last resort, the Windows Task Manager will allow you to forcefully quit the offending browser processes.

David Harley