Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher at anti-malware company Malwarebytes, received a scam phone call with the hacker saying they were with Microsoft technical support.

Sequra decided to play along and turned his computer on to his virtual machine.

"Many of my family members have received these calls, so I wanted to play the game to see how the scam worked. My aim was to be totally respectful and play the perfect victim."

The first thing the caller asked was that Sequra turn on the event viewer. She said: "These errors and warnings are very much harmful for your computer. These are major problems and it doesn't matter if you have one or two errors or more than that. Each one has already started corrupting your whole computer system."

Next, she directed him to enter the prefetch folder and explained: that these were "malicious hacking files that are making the computer infected and the system slow".

The next thing asked was that Sequra check the System Configuration Utility services tab. She explained that the reason that some of the services in that tab were marked with a "stopped" status was because a warranty had expired and only a Microsoft technician could start them again.

The caller was then replaced by a man who told Sequra that he could renew his warranty for only $299. They then open up a browser and instruct Segura to enter in his personal information, including banking information and make a PayPal payment of $299.

You can view the scam as it unfolds in this video:



Source: Wired.co.uk