Fake CCleaner offered for a small fee

Anything and everything you download from the Internet could be a piece of malware, disguised as a legitimate document or software.

GFI has recently spotted a Russian website located at myccleaner(dot)ru offering for download the well-know system optimization tool CCleaner. But, there’s a catch – once the user downloads the offered ccsetup303.exe file and tries to install it, he is asked to pay a small fee of about $5 in order to activate it:

The real, legitimate CCleaner with premium support costs $24,95 when bought at its developer’s official site, so the lesser price could be seen as an incentive to opt for the aforementioned Russian site and the file it offers for download.

Unfortunately, inexperienced users are unlikely to spot this scheme before handing over the money. But, there is a silver lining: an up-to-date AV solution will probably tag the file as malware as soon as it is downloaded on the system since, according to Christopher Boyd, the file in question is detected by 29 of the 43 solutions employed by VirusTotal.