Microsoft Corporation announced on October twenty one two thousand sixteen that they found a fake blue screen malware in existence. This threat is referred to as SupportScam:MSIL/Hicurdismos.A. This malware poses as Microsoft Security Essentials.
Computers running Windows eight and Windows ten already have built in anti-malware Windows defender. You do NOT need to install Microsoft Security Essentials on afore mentioned operating systems. Microsoft Security Essentials will install on both Windows Vista and Windows seven.
This Hicurdismos malware installs a fake blue screen of death BSOD graphic onto your computer. Once installed this malware will:
* Hides your mouse cursor, to make you think your system is not responding
* Disables Task Manager, to prevent you from ending this process
* Displays this fake Blue Screen of Death image, which then occupies your entire screen, preventing you from using your computer
This false positive blue screen of death malware includes a 1-800-418-4201 telephone support number. Microsoft never includes a phone number to dial in their legitimate blue screen error messages. Also, this bogus blue screen uses color yellow in some text.
Microsoft blue screen error messages are white font on a light blue background. Microsoft Internet Exlorer and Edge web browsers will warn you that this malware might harm your computer. When inspecting this executable once downloaded, there are obvious discrepencies.
File description, company, file version, and size information are all different. Also, this malware posing as a fake Microsoft security essentials uses a different icon. If you have been affected with this malware you can use tools like Windows Defender, Microsoft Security Essentials, MalwareBytes, etc. to try to remove this.
Microsoft technial support will never ask for your credit card information up front. Also, their blue screen error messages never have contact information, ie. a telephone number. Another way to attempt to mitigate malware, spyware, viruses, etc. from installing on your computer is to use your Windows based computer with an account with Standard privileges only and NOT administrator privileges.