Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A

One of the biggest computer-related fears for most people is losing their data. To have important files – such as work or school-related papers – photographs, videos and music suddenly disappearing without a trace. While computers have come a long way in the last decade, this was once not such an uncommon occurrence and a legitimate fear for many computer users. Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A preys on this fear of losing one's files suddenly, trying to take advantage of the computer user's panic when they find that their files have suddenly disappeared. Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A is a type of spyware known as scareware because Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A carries out a scam that involves scaring the victim in order to make the victim vulnerable. Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A allows criminals to profit by convincing the victim that they need to purchase a useless disk repair tool, which does not come cheap at eighty dollars! While fake disk repair utilities are nothing new and neither are Trojans that can hide the victim's files, combining both of these into one multi-component attack makes Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A attack particularly nasty.

Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A Attacks by Hiding Your Files

The main way in which Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A attacks its victims is by hiding all files and folders on the infected computer system as part of its installation process. If you want to make sure that a computer user panics, take a folder that contain important documents and make it appear as if it is empty. To make matters worse, Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A makes changes to the Windows Registry that allow Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A to display fake error messages that appear to come from the infected computer system itself. This means that when the victim tries to open one of their folders, it will appear to be empty and then display an error message claiming that there has been a hard disk error.

Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A is not particularly sophisticated, relying instead on social engineering. It simply changes file attributes to hidden as well as disables common shortcuts and prevents the computer user from making files visible from the Windows Explorer. Here is where the criminals attempt to profit. Once the computer user is good and scared, Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A starts displaying constant error messages with cryptic, technical language (that is mostly gibberish) claiming that there have been several critical hard disk errors. These messages attempt to convince the victim that they must pay for a repair utility. However, installing this supposed hard drive repair utility does nothing. Once the criminals behind Trojan.HiddenFilesFraud.A have your money, they have no interest in restoring your computer back to normal. To do that, you will need a reliable anti-malware tool.