I have published more articles about Fake Antivirus than any other topic. It’s apparent why cyber criminals peddle their rogue antivirus programs, it’s because they’re making more revenue than legitimate antivirus vendors.
There are an estimated 500,000 unique fake AV binaries on the Internet today according to what was noted at RSA this year. What’s most disturbing is that the legitimate AV vendors cannot provide new virus definitions fast enough to combat these fake AV’s. One way of putting a dent into this problem is having the search engines stop indexing these web sites that are distributing rogueware.
In addition to search engines helping out, AV vendors need to be more responsive in detecting new binaries in the wild. How is it that sites like Bleeping Computer, WOT and TechJaws discover sites peddling rogueware before the legitimate AV vendors? In addition to finding these bad sites, we also provide removal instructions.
Antivirus vendors need to step it up a notch in order to outpace these cyber criminals or maybe it’s the fake antivirus programs that drive sales for legitimate security vendors. I hope it’s not the latter or we will not see the demise or decrease in fake AV programs.
Cyber criminals need to be stopped and quarantined in a 4×8 jail cell.
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Well Frank.
You know how I feel about cyber criminals. they aren’t going to stop and if they are making money at it or it is a game to them they should be tracked down and exported to a secluded island and NEVER be allowed to reproduce.
I will not add the other punishments I’m thinking of. But you know me! I get evil on this subject.
Thanks for writing this article, the word needs to get out there and thanks to you and Tech Jaws it will.
Big hug
Sophia,
I could think a few punishments I would like to hand out as well. :)
isn’t it mainly the developers fault when they leave it as an open resource allowing any designer,programmer or engineer to modify the content of the software?
I can see having the option left open to customize it but doing so there is no way of controlling what is done and who has done it, when it is being misused.
With the world relying on computers daily,I feel there is going to come a time where restrictions and laws are going to become more strict for the safety and it needs to start with the programmers,designers,engineers,etc.
Little Johnny in the basement shouldn’t be allowed on the computer.You give a mouse a cookie -he is going to want a glass of milk, is giving sources to a geek empowering him to do what he wants.
These phony web sites that are being made are ridiculous.I was told once the reason was the person gets paid when someone clicks onto a site.
I’ll shut up now.
Not sure what you mean by ‘leaving it as an open resource’…all the fake stuff is specially created programs or hacked programs.
It is hard for search engines to help because it is difficult to automatically detect malware without downloading it yourself. But users can definitely help others by rating sites on WOT and similar programs so that people have a fair warning when they visit a fake AV site.
Amanda,
Right on about WOT! It’s one of my favorite proactive add-ons I use all the time when searching.