[ISN] Antiviral ‘Scareware’ Just One More Intruder

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 02:28:36 -0600 (CST)
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.

[...]


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Received on Mon Nov 03 2008 - 00:28:36 PST

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