Tech support scammers are known for their cheek — making unfounded claims that PCs are infected to scare consumers into parting with their money — but a Symantec partner took nerve to a new level, a security company claimed last week.

According to San Jose, Calif.-based Malwarebytes, Silurian Tech Support ran a scam in which its employees, who billed themselves as support technicians, used obscure but harmless entries in Windows’ Event Viewer and Task Manager to claim that a PC had been overwhelmed by malware, then leveraged those bogus threats to sell overpriced copies of Symantec‘s Norton security software and an annual contract for follow-up phone support.

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