The feds stepped up and nabbed a ring of scareware distributors who made millions of dollars distributing their scareware, also known as FAKE Antivirus. This is great news, but will it totally eliminate this form of online scams? The likelihood that this group or ring is the sole organization that distributes scareware is highly unlikely, but it will make a positive impact in the reduction of scareware distribution.
Chip East / REUTERS
The Department of Justice and the FBI have cracked an international scareware ring believed to have scammed over $72m (£45m).
Operation Trident Tribunal seized more than 40 computers and servers and arrested two people in Latvia. 22 computers were seized in the US along with 25 machines in France, Germany, Latvia, Lithunia, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK.
The gang screwed money out of more than a million victims. They installed software on their computers which falsely claimed to have detected viruses or malware. The gang then took payment for supposedly cleaning up the machines.
About 960,000 machines were infected with the scareware and $72m ($45m) extracted from worried users.
The two highly distributed and most malicious scareware programs since 2009 are Security Tool and System Tool. I am not sure if this group is responsible for the distribution of these programs.
Source: The Register
The question that I have is how the FBI got jurisdiction to go after these guys in Latvia. How every they managed it though, this is very good news.