HDD Low

The developers behind well known rogue defragmenters Scanner, Win Scanner, HDD Rescue and Disk Repair have released their newest destruction, HDD Low. Despite giving itself off as a helpful and powerful system optimizer, HDD Low is a malicious program with no redeeming qualities at all. From the list of company this rogue keeps alone it is easy to see why users would want to obliterate HDD Low from their systems for good.

As with any other type of rogueware, HDD Low’s main objective is to scare users into parting with their money. HDD Low will use any tactic at its disposal to achieve this and will stop at nothing to gain the trust of its intended victim.

HDD Low is delivered onto host PCs by way of clandestine and seditious Trojan and malware bundled downloads. Browser hijackers which diver users’ browsing and search sessions to their sites are especially dangerous and strategic in HDD Low’s distribution as in some cases it only requires the user’s browser to open one of these website’s homepages in order to effect a successful infection. In this case it’s fitting to reiterate the need for a powerful and fully functional security tool which will protect your system effectively against such attacks.

Once the HDD Low infection is rooted in the PC, users will start experiencing various distressing symptoms. HDD Low will hide the contents of some folders in a concerted effort to cause further panic and confusion among its victims. HDD Low will also prevent the user from launching any executables. It does this so that the user will not be able to run a security program which will detect and remove HDD Low from the system. The following messages will be displayed whenever the user tries to run an executable on the system:

“Windows detected a hard drive problem.
A hard drive error occurred while starting the application.”

and

“Windows cannot find notepad. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search.”

When the user closes these alerts, HDD Low will present the user with another popup message which pretends to be able to fix the hard drive. This fake message reads as follows:

“Fix Disk
Windows Disk Diagnostics will scan the system to identify performance problems.
Start or Cancel”

Should the user make the mistake of pressing on the Start button, HDD Low will emulate a genuine scan of your system, and generate a dramatic report which states that your system is in grave trouble. This fake report reads as follows:

“Windows Disk Diagnostics
Windows detected a hard disk error.
A problem with the hard drive sectors has been detected. It is recommended to download the following certified software to fix the detected hard drive problems. Do you want to download recommended software?’

This is just part of HDD Low’s attack on the system. If you persist in trying to launch an executable even while infected, you should eventually succeed. After you run the fake scan of HDD Low you will be informed that your PC has various dramatic errors which you need to attend to. These are all fake, and read as follows:

Requested registry access is not allowed. Registry defragmentation required
Read time of hard drive clusters less than 500 ms
32% of HDD space is unreadable
Bad sectors on hard drive or damaged file allocation table
GPU RAM temperature is critically high. Urgent RAM memory optimization is required to prevent system crash
Drive C initializing error
Ram Temperature is 83 C. Optimization is required for normal operation.
Hard drive doesn't respond to system commands
Data Safety Problem. System integrity is at risk.
Registry Error - Critical Error

Do not fall victim to this foolery, and remove HDD Low without another moment’s hesitation. Some other fake security notifications employed by HDD Low as part of its attack on the system are as follows:

“Critical Error!
Damaged hard drive clusters detected. Private data is at risk.”

“Critical Error
Hard Drive not found. Missing hard drive.”

“Critical Error
RAM memory usage is critically high. RAM memory failure.”

“Critical Error
Windows can't find hard disk space. Hard drive error”

“Critical Error!
Windows was unable to save all the data for the file System32496A8300. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware.”

Critical Error
A critical error has occurred while indexing data stored on hard drive. System restart required.”

“System Restore
The system has been restored after a critical error. Data integrity and hard drive integrity verification required.”

Should you find that your access to the Internet is blocked, enter the following security key:

0973467457475070215340537432225

This will not only open up your internet connection and allow you to download a cure for HDD Low, but it will also put a stop to the other annoying and frustrating symptoms of this infection. By entering this security key and disabling all the frustrating symptoms from annoying you, do not think that the threat has been eliminated. You will still need to eliminate HDD Low from your system in order to prevent serious and irreversible damage from occurring on your system.

When presented with a parasite such as HDD Low, it will help the user to have a genuine and powerful security tool at the ready which will be able to detect and get rid of HDD Low with the minimal of fuss.