Microsoft repair scam on Linux box?

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Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 2:22 am

I'm on a trip. An hour or 45 minutes before I left, I got a phone call, and as the number was in my area code, I answered it. It turned out to be an Indian who claims to be a Microsoft service tech. He asked me what's on the screen. I told him two Konqueror windows, a Konsole, and a card game. He told me to close them all. Instead I switched to another virtual desktop that had only a Konsole (usually it has a Konqueror window showing Youtube, but I had closed it already). He told me to hold down the "flag key" (the Windows key) and hit 'r'. I did, and got "sr" in the Konsole. He was as puzzled as I was (I don't use the "flag" key). We went through this a few more times and he called me an idiot. He told me he wanted the "run command" window. I told him that's Alt-F2, which I did. He told me the URL for Team Viewer, which I typed in, and got the website in Konqueror. Then he told me to click on download.

At this point it was half an hour before I had to get on the road. He told me it would take only two more minutes, but I cut him off, hung up, called my friend, turned off the laptop, loaded everything into the pickup, and left.

Now I'm wondering. If I had installed Team Viewer and run it, what would he, who apparently knows only Windows, have done with it?

Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 3:02 am

He'd have pretended to fix some made up problem, try to get your credit card to buy a security key or some other made up thing-- then he would have went through your personal stuff and try to get your bank account information and other personal info. He may download a key logger and other malware. Tech support scammers are the scum of the earth, even worse than 419ers as far as I'm concerned. I do enjoy calling them and wasting there time pretending to be the most inept person on the face of the planet. I've gone out of my way to learn a few choice words in Hindi to call them once they figure out I'm just dicking them around.

Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 2:24 pm

Does he have any malware for Linux? What if I ran Team Viewer as another user who has no sensitive information?

Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 3:33 pm

It's very likely that he didn't even realise that you were on a Linux box and would have been totally stuck when you handed him control. Or if he did know, he'd ignore the malware and hope to get you to pay to fix made up problems (with your credit card, which would then be hammered for other things as well) or grab ID or other documents for identity theft

Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 6:42 pm

What B8er said. You can find videos on Youtube that show what happens when tech scammers run into an OS other than Windows.

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