Booming scareware biz raking in $34m a month

Fraudsters are making approximately $34m per month through scareware attacks, designed to trick surfers into purchasing rogue security packages supposedly needed to deal with non-existent threats. A new study, The Business of Rogueware, by Panda Security researchers Luis Corrons and Sean-Paul Correll, found that scareware …

[amanfromMars 1]

Hmmm ?

""By taking advantage of the fear in malware attacks, they prey upon willing buyers of their fake anti-virus software, ..."

Does that not show present anti-virus software to be an ineffective scam?

[Maty]

Oh, well done, Sherlock!

'Panda identified two major groups of players in the scareware business: program writers and distributors.'

Brilliant. Without Panda's incisive research I'd never have figured this out. Who'd have thought it? Incidentally, there's a third group - the mugus who buy and install the stuff. (But then I'm used to Panda not catching everything.)

I look forward to Panda's further research determining that viruses are written by bad people, and may harm your computer.

[Hairy Scary]

WTF

Something wrong here --- I just read, and was able to understand, a post by amanfromMars.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ffs!

I find it incredulous that people are still falling for this scam. If they are unsure, what’s the problem with a quick Google search; it’s not quantum physics ffs. I think is time for computer resellers to commence IQ testing its potential customers, as most seem increasingly unable to operate a Pc or do simple research.

RTFM you retatded fukwits!

[Anonymous Coward]

35 million? Or 35 thousand? or 35?

"A new study, The Business of Rogueware, by Panda Security researchers Luis Corrons and Sean-Paul Correll, found that scareware distributors are successfully infecting 35 million machines a month."

That number is vastly inflated, I recall one of the worst zero day Windows exploits that required no intervention and attacked machines with broad band as soon as they were switched on, hit 14 million PCs.

So on the basis of that sanity check alone, I think this report is scareware. If 35 thousand read the advert and 150 were stupid enough to go for it, that would be the most likely number IMHO.

[Matt Davey]

@Hairy Scary

Ah no, that's amanfrommars1 you're talking about. A more coherent entity entirely.

[Rex Alfie Lee]

Do Not Be Taken

Don't be afeared or afraid. Get Linux, dump Windows & be secure.

[EJ]

Here's how bad it's gotten

TechRepublic.com puts up an article entitled "10 ways to avoid viruses and spyware". While reading through it to see if they had anything new, innovative, or otherwise worthwhile (they didn't), I notice a sponsored link on the story's page for....

"Anti-Spyware 2009 - Free

#1 Rated Spyware Remover - 100% Guaranteed - 47 Million Downloads!"

The link? www.adware-2009.com, which, you guessed it, is scareware/malware.

The irony - huge. The laugh - loud. The shaking of head - vigorous.