The number of websites that pretend to offer official updates of the Adobe Flash Player is increasing, while in reality they are some malicious software. Instead of a legitimate update, these sites promote various adware that install other unwanted programs on an unsuspecting user.
The recent discovery on such a website, to the surprise of various security engineers, installs a mining software for cryptocurrencies using the computer's CPU at 100%.
As reported by user “SecurityAura” who discovered this site, when a user visits this Adobe Flash Player information site, the site will automatically start a download on the computer. Checking the downloaded file he notices it is named “java-player.exe”. Wanting to examine the file he uses the online VirusTotal platform and while expecting it to be another malicious adware file or PUP he realized it is a CPU mining software called SystemProcess that uses all available processor resources. Then he sets this process to run automatically each time a user logs into his computer. Fortunately, this malware is detected by a large number of security products, and can be easily removed.
Unfortunately, people who use the internet constantly fall onto scam websites. The best advice anyone can give when you encounter a site that tells you that a program needs an update and you have to click somewhere to download it is to close the website immediately. You should download and install updates only from highly trusted sites, and even then it's better to go directly to the official site of the program to download the update.
