WINDOWS 11 BETA REVIEW SOFTWARE
"The easiest thing they can do to protect themselves is to only ever download software from trusted and vetted sources, usually directly from the vendor or official application stores," he advises.
"People don't have to resign themselves to not getting hold of the pre-release build for fear of falling victim to malware," Sean Wright, Immersive Labs' SME application security lead, says. The researchers stated that "several hundred infection attempts that used similar Windows 11-related schemes" have already been defeated by Kaspersky products.
The secondary installer, while labelled as a Windows 11 download manager and requiring the user to accept a so-called license agreement, actually dropped a malware bomb: a whole bunch of malware bombs, in fact. One particular installer was found to open what appeared to be a standard Windows installation wizard when in reality, it was only present to download another installer. In the case of the Windows 11 installers that the Kaspersky researchers looked at, the malicious payloads varied from adware serving at one end of the spectrum to password-stealers and Trojans at the other. While there's nothing new in such sites being distribution channels for malware, security researchers at Kaspersky have found some particularly nasty problems with fake Windows 11 installers. For whatever reason, some people don't want to sign up as a Windows Insider and are instead downloading Windows 11 installers from alternative sources such as torrent sites and dodgy forums.
Not everyone, however, is taking the official route to a Windows 11 preview. Kaspersky security researchers issue fake Windows 11 downloads warning