Months before its official release, Apple's much-anticipated iCloud music storing service has already attracted the attention of cybercriminals.
Announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on June 6, Apple's iCloud is scheduled to ship sometime this fall.
But never ones to waste time, online scammers have begun creating malicious phishing Web pages that appear high atop the list of Google search results for iCloud and similar keywords, the security firm Trend Micro wrote in a blog.
Other related search terms that could land you on phony pages are "What is Apple iCloud" and "What is iCloud Apple?"
This cybercrime tactic of tricking Google into giving favorable position to rogue pages is called blackhat SEO (or poisoned SEO), and is often deployed to capitalize on public interest in trending topics such as movie releases or new, highly sought gadgets or games.
[Google Fights 'Poisoned' Search Results]
In this case, Trend Micro has detected fraudulent Web pages that attempt to trick users into downloading and running a file called SecurityScanner.exe, or TROJ_FAKEAV.HKZ.
Both files infect victims' computers with a fake anti-virus program called "XP Antispyware 2012," which then hijacks users' systems, preventing them from using any Web browser until they purchase the rogue anti-virus software.