Fireball

A new malware, Fireball, infected over 250 million computers up till now worldwide and has been created by a Chinese company in an attempt to generate revenues through forced browser advertisement.

Fireball is essentially an adware that has the potential to completely crash your system. The virus can spy on your search behavior and probably retrieve personal information and data.

Cyber security firm Check Point, said, the malware is far more dangerous as it is an advanced form of malware that has backdoor Trojan capabilities.

According to Check Point,  25.3 million infections in India (10.1%), 24.1 million in Brazil (9.6%), 16.1 million in Mexico (6.4%), and 13.1 million in Indonesia (5.2%).

The United States has witnessed 5.5 million infections (2.2%).

Researchers say that adware allows the attackers to inject any malware into the victim’s computer without any hindrance.

adware

Rafotech, the Chinese company behind this campaign has been using the adware to redirect traffic to certain search engines and using it to advertise its products.

Essentially, the adware inject advertisements in browsers simply, and the virus comes enshrouded in other downloadable software created by the company.

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Hence, if install free software the adware gets in your system where it can easily install various plug-ins in your browser and toggle with your browser’s settings in any way the attacker wants.

Rafotech uses Fireball to manipulate the victims’ browsers and turn their default search engines and home-pages into fake search engines.

This redirects the queries to either yahoo.com or Google.com. The fake search engines include tracking pixels used to collect the users’ private information.

The primary purpose of the adware is to track down your search behavior for advertising purposes. As such, the adware uses pixel tracking system to gather relevant information.