http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/technology/internet/30virus.html By JOHN MARKOFF The New York Times October 29, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO — How much money can criminals make scaring naïve computer users? Try $5 million a year. That is how much a marketing associate of one Russian operation appears to be earning from its sales of fake antivirus software through an elaborate scheme that relies on e-mail spam and indirectly controlling thousands of unprotected PCs, according to internal company files posted online by a Russian hacker. The company is Bakasoftware, a clandestine effort based somewhere in Russia that markets what it claims is an antivirus program strictly to English-speaking computer users. The program, whose name has recently been updated from Antivirus XP 2008 to Antivirus XP 2009, lodges itself on a victim’s computer and then begins generating a series of pop-up messages warning that the user’s computer is infected. If the user responds to the warnings, he is urged to buy a $49.95 program for disinfecting the machine. [...] ______________________________________________ Visit the InfoSec News Security Bookstore Best Selling Security Books and More! http://www.shopinfosecnews.orgReceived on Mon Nov 03 2008 - 00:28:36 PST
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