Home Malware Programs Malware WS.Reputation.1

WS.Reputation.1

Posted: August 15, 2011

WS.Reputation.1 is a heuristic label for program files that have been widely rated as having poor Web reputations with respect to safety, privacy, etc. As a general category, WS.Reputation.1 can be applied to many types of PC threats, but the most recent WS.Reputation.1 campaign involved a Trojan that contacted malicious Web servers for the purpose of compromising your PC and/or installing other malware. This version of WS.Reputation.1, sometimes detected as a form of adware, contacts multiple copycat sites that are disguised as advertising networks while actually being infection vectors. Victims of these latest WS.Reputation.1 attacks usually are compromised after they attempt to install illegal software, such as the recently-circulated fake Saints Row IV key generators. SpywareRemove.com malware researchers emphasize that pirated software links often are a hotbed for PC threats like WS.Reputation.1 and recommend using anti-malware software as they're needed to delete WS.Reputation.1 and its payloads if your PC does become infected.

WS.Reputation.1: Crowd-Sourcing Malware Alerts

WS.Reputation.1 is a generalized detection for files that have procured widespread poor ratings for your PC's safety. Although some WS.Reputation.1 alerts have the potential to be false positives, SpywareRemove.com malware analysts honed in on a new occurrence of WS.Reputation.1 that was definitively malicious: a fake key generator (or 'keygen') for the latest of the Saints Row video games. The Saints Row series, a prominent sandbox game brand in the vein of Grand Theft Auto, only recently released game IV, making the time perfect for malware authors distributing PC threats that are disguised as software piracy utilities for that game. The links to these deceptively-marketed downloads usually are found on social networking/media sites like Facebook, with the file downloads hosted on malware blogs.

Anyone interested in downloading a 'free' key for Saints Row IV may end up infecting their PCs with a variant of WS.Reputation.1, which malware experts have found to contact multiple malicious servers. Each of the servers contacted by this version of WS.Reputation.1 has accumulated a history of distributing malicious software, and WS.Reputation.1 most likely is intended to be a Trojan downloader that installs new malware onto the compromised system. WS.Reputation.1 also makes a series of Registry changes that are suitable for enabling the automatic startup of itself and other PC threats.

Keeping Safe from WS.Reputation.1 Malware Inside the Cloud of Opinions

Although WS.Reputation.1 isn't a foolproof classification for malicious software, you should, by default, treat any file detected as WS.Reputation.1 as potentially harmful to your computer. This especially goes for WS.Reputation.1 files that have been procured from suspicious or illegal websites like the fake software piracy blogs mentioned earlier in this article. SpywareRemove.com malware analysts also remind readers that similar disguised PC threats often are timed to coincide with the releases of major applications or other products, making piracy a particularly dangerous risk for your PC in cases of new releases.

To (what should be) no one's surprise, WS.Reputation.1 doesn't install itself as a normal application and is difficult to delete by the normal means like the Windows Control Panel. Deleting WS.Reputation.1 and its Registry changes most efficiently will require anti-malware software, and SpywareRemove.com malware experts particularly recommend being hasty about using such tools in light of WS.Reputation.1's potential for installing extra PC threats automatically.

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