Antivirus 360 is the latest scam created by the scum of the Internet to filch money from unsuspecting users. This is a spyware program that pretends to be a legitimate anti-spyware utility. First it shows the users a browser window that tells him that the computer is infected by spyware and prompts him to download and install Antivirus 360 to remove the threat. What the user doesn’t know yet that the software itself is a spyware and he will need to remove Antivirus 360.
This is the next step forward in the Trojan’s strategy to masquerade as legitimate programs. Earlier the Trojans pretended to be regular applications or tools, or even messages from someone you know, but as people came to know about that they stopped falling for it, and now the Trojans are pretending to be antivirus software to alarm you into installing them, and giving them an opportunity to infect your computer.
If the unsuspecting user downloads and installs the software on running Antivirus 360 does a fake scan of the computer and displays a big list of supposed infections. Alarmingly many of the files that it shows as infections are legitimate files of the operating system and removing them would create problems in running the OS. That’s why you must remove Antivirus 360 immediately if you have this on your PC. This is a very potent strategy and as it strikes at the very core of human psychology – fear, it is also a very successful strategy. Countless computers have been infected and many people have paid out money to the makers of the Trojan in a state of alarm to protect their data.
The worst thing is that the Trojan horse will delete legitimate Windows files if installed and run, and it might corrupt the Windows installation making the user believe there was a legitimate infection.
Most of the latest anti spyware software have already started detecting this spyware and will remove Antivirus 360 automatically. If you don’t have an anti spyware software, or if your anti spyware software is not detecting this threat then you must remove this malicious software manually.
How to remove Antivirus 360 from your computer:
a) Remove all the Antivirus 360 files
The program copies itself to the folder A360 in your Program Files Folder. So the folder will look like this typically ‘c:\program files\A360’. Antivirus 360 will also create a shortcut on your desktop and the Start Menu.
First delete the A360 directory from Program files to remove the executable from your computer. Now delete the desktop shortcut and the Start menu entry. To delete the Start Menu entries, right click on them using the mouse button and select ‘Delete’. This will remove Antivirus 360 from your file system.
b) Remove the Antivirus 360 Registry entries
The program creates registry entries to run it automatically when Windows boots. You must delete the following registry keys using regedit.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\1245980495809458098
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\ 1239409283409824823048
The numbers might be random, so look for a lot of numbers.
