With Anthropic’s models becoming increasingly powerful, Claude has garnered more and more attention these past few months. And as AI tools grow in popularity, fake download sites and malicious ads have unsurprisingly appeared. Over the past two to three years, both ChatGPT and Gemini have been impersonated multiple times—from fake desktop apps to fake Chrome extensions, and even fake chatbots promoting cryptocurrency scams.
According to foreign media Bleeping Computer Reports indicate that there is a fake Claude Pro website online. Not only does it closely mimic Anthropic’s official Claude page, but it also offers a 14-day free trial to lure users into downloading and installing it. Unwitting users may mistakenly download the file. Although the download does install Claude, the installer has been植入 malicious code. After installation, Windows will have a backdoor, granting hackers remote access to the computer.
Warning! Fake Claude AI websites spotted; installation files found with malicious code, computers could be remotely controlled by hackers
The fake website’s URL is claude-pro.com, and it calls itself Claude-Pro. For anyone familiar with AI tools, it’s immediately obvious that the extra “pro” is off — the real official URL is claude.com. But people who haven’t used Claude before could easily fall for it, since the site completely rips off Anthropic’s official website design, copying the color scheme and fonts to make it look like the real thing.
For those who are more suspicious, they just need to click any button other than the download button to discover something’s wrong with this site—every other button just redirects you back to the homepage, and only the “download button” actually works.
Image source:Malwarebytes
After downloading, it’s not a ready-to-install installer but a 505 MB ZIP file named Claude-Pro-windows-x64.zip, containing an MSI installer. The file size is actually a bit suspicious—the genuine Claude desktop app isn’t that large—but precisely because it’s large enough, it actually makes people think it must be real.
According to foreign outlet Malwarebytes, during their analysis they found that MSI installs files to the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Anthropic\Claude\Cluade\. The last directory is “Cluade,” not “Claude” — the letters ‘a’ and ‘u’ are swapped. So if you’re worried you might be infected, you can check whether this suspicious folder exists under Claude.
After installation, a “Claude AI.lnk” shortcut will appear on the desktop, but it doesn’t point to the actual Claude executable—it points to a VBScript dropper in the SquirrelTemp folder.
After launching, the VBScript first navigates up two levels to find the real claude.exe and starts Claude, which looks completely normal. However, at the same time, the VBScript also secretly copies three files to the Windows startup folder C:\Users\
The three files placed in the startup folder:
- NOVUpdate.exe: A legitimate, signed G DATA antivirus update program, weaponized by attackers as a DLL side-loading host
- avk.dll: Malicious DLL used to replace genuine G DATA components
- NOVUpdate.exe.dat: Encrypted payload file
Image source:Malwarebytes
After further investigation of this wave of attacks by foreign media outlet Sophos, they found that the first stage is DonutLoader, which then fetches what researchers call Beagle, a “relatively simple backdoor program” with a limited set of commands:
- Uninstall: Remove Agent
- Command: Execute instruction
- Upload: Upload file
- Download: Download file
- Create Folder / Create Directory
- Rename: Rename file
- List directory: List directory contents
- Remove: Delete directory
This backdoor communicates with the command-and-control server at “license[.]claude-pro[.]com” via TCP port 443 or UDP port 8080, with communications protected by a hardcoded AES key.
Image source:Sophos
Now this website appears to have been removed. If you previously downloaded a Claude installer from the internet without paying much attention, it’s recommended to check it just to be safe.
When searching for AI tools online in the future, always double-check whether it’s actually the official website. As AI continues to grow in popularity, we can expect these fake websites to become even more common—and nowadays, it’s easy to create a perfect replica of a website using AI.
Source: KOCPC Chinese