Just had a cyber attack that bitdefender missed

Just had a cyber attack in the form of a windows defender error dialog box. alarm went off on computer directing me to call microsoft. I logged out of the windows user before it could get locked down. ran bitdefender scan and nothing pops up. what do i do next. this was a ransomeware attack

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Gjoksi

Hello.
You might be a victim of adware, so follow the steps from this article:
https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2574/
Regards.

Alexandru_BD

Hi,

Technically speaking, that's not a "cyber attack", it's a fake infection pop-up. Fake antivirus pop-ups are among the most common scareware used by cybercriminals to trick users into handing over personal data, paying for fake services and actually introducing malicious software onto their devices (infostealers, ransomware or spyware).

The antivirus doesn't detect this because the pop-ups are coming from the browser, so there's no actual malware residing on the system, thus the scan will not find anything. But this is not a failure of the antivirus, because Bitdefender cannot take any direct measures related to this type of notifications, such as adware that you agreed on or something you enabled, like site setting, site notification, redirects in your browser or installed toolbars, extensions or applications. The fake alerts in this situation do not have anything malicious attached to them, but when you click on them, they will redirect to malicious sites that try to collect your data or install abusive or dangerous software. This is where the antivirus actually kicks in, blocking access to harmful websites or malware downloads. The following article explains this tactic and how to spot fake alerts:

https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/fake-antivirus-pop-ups

The one that says your "Microsoft account will be locked" is pretty common, and you don't need Windows Defender if you have Bitdefender installed, this disables Defender upon install anyway.

Follow Gjoksi's advice to reset your browser and get rid of the fake alerts.

Regards