Scammers take advantage of two-year-old bug in Chrome

Scammers have taken advantage of a more than two-year-old bug in Google’s Chrome browser that has virtually locked up PCs. The scammers hope that, in desperation, users will call the number they conjure up on the screen.

Scammers are taking advantage of the bug that Google first learned about in July 2014 by trying to save millions of favorites in one fell swoop. The browser does not crash, but hangs on the page that the user has open. Not coincidentally, there is a message on that page, supposedly from Microsoft, that the system has contracted an infection, reports Malwarebytes.

Users can fall victim to the scam by visiting a page designed to exploit the bug. Stopping the Chrome process in the task manager will stop it, but in many cases systems will be too slow to start the task manager, says Malwarebytes. Google rated the bug as a low-priority bug in 2014, as it involves something that can only hang the PC and not allow access to data on the computer. That is why there is no fix yet. This is the first time abuse of the bug has been observed. It is unknown if and when the browser builder will fix the bug.