Security News > 2022 > August > Wolf in sheep’s clothing: how malware tricks users and antivirus
One of the primary methods used by malware distributors to infect devices is by deceiving people into downloading and running malicious files, and to achieve this deception, malware authors are using a variety of tricks.
Some of these tricks include masquerading malware executables as legitimate applications, signing them with valid certificates, or compromising trustworthy sites to use them as distribution points.
According to VirusTotal, a security platform for scanning uploaded files for malware, some of these tricks are happening on a much larger scale than initially thought.
The platform has compiled a report presenting stats from January 2021 until July 2022, based on the submission of two million files daily, illustrating trends in how malware is distributed.
Victims download these files thinking they're getting the applications they need, but upon running the installers, they infect their systems with malware.
Finally, there's the trick of hiding malware inside legitimate application installers and running the infection process in the background while the real apps execute in the foreground.