At the time of reporting, the website reaching the modified software, ‘windows-movie-maker.org’, issues up as one of the top results when hunting for “Movie Maker” and “Windows Movie Maker” on Google using this browser, it ranks as whole one in the majority of countries with the highest number of internet users. On Bing, the search engine with the next largest global market share, the website is also located on the first page of results.
ESET security detects the scam as Win32/Hoax.MovieMaker and block the website spreading it. We have notified both Google and Microsoft about the dishonest nature of the high-ranking website.
As an outcome of the website’s high search engine ranking, the thieves behind the scam have managed to reach a global “audience”, with the changed Windows Movie Maker emerging among the most prevalent threats in ESET’s telemetry in the past few days.
On November 5, 2017, Win32/Hoax.MovieMaker was the third several detected threat worldwide and the number one threat to Israel. As of November 6, our telemetry taped many detections in the Philippines, in Israel, Finland and Denmark.
When users connect the software offered on the above-specified website, they get a functioning Windows Movie Maker. However, unlike the judge and free Windows Movie Maker by Microsoft, this one claims to be a trial version that needs to be updated to a full version in order to offer all features.
The user is frequently prompted to obtain the full version, first when the software is driven and later when the user tries to save a new document. In the latter case, the prompt stops the user from continuing, making it appear as if storing a document was a paid feature.
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