A company that happens to be an active member of the Symantec Partner Program is scamming people with fake warnings designed to look like Symantec’s flagship product, Norton Antivirus.

In this case, just like with other Tech Scams, a warning message pops up on the victims computer saying that “System Critically Infected. If you are not able to click on this button, Immediately contact Support toll Free Helpline 1-855-637-1900”. Of course the message is bogus. But it comes in a form that looks like it is from Symantec.

If the victim calls the number for help, the scam takes the usual course of action. They are directed to a web page where they are instructed to allow the scammers to take control of the computer. Once in control, they open the Event Viewer and point out the many warnings ( which are normal ). They then open the task manager and say that the csrss.exe process is malware.

They offer two ways to "fix" the issues:

A one time fix and installation of Norton for $199.
A one year warranty with Norton for $249.

What is most disturbing about this tech scam is that the scammers are official member of the Symantec Partner Program. It is a sad state of affairs when tech support scammers are not ashamed of using lies to sell their products and services but also double cross their partners, thereby inflicting brand and reputation damage.

Source: MalwareBytes