FTC goes after scareware scammers
Courts crack down on pushers of rogue anti-malware.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced a successful move to persuade a US district court to shut down a major
player in the rogue anti-spyware business. The company behind the notorious WinFixer and XP Antivirus scams
has been issued with a temporary restraining order barring it from claiming to have performed any kind of scanning of
its victims' systems, the main vector of the company's duplicitous scams.
The defendants in the case are the companies Innovative Marketing, registered in Belize but apparently based
in Kiev, Ukraine, and ByteHosting Internet Services, run out of Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as several individuals
running or profiting from the companies, both of which operated under a range of other names. The US District Court for
the District of Maryland approved the FTC's request to call a halt to the companies' activities and freeze the assets of
those behind the scams.
According to a press release issued by the FTC, over 1 million computer users had been taken in by various scams run by
Innovative Marketing, which included a wide range of rogue anti-malware products and others claiming to detect
child pornography and other unwanted content on victims' systems. Reaching victims via online advertising, the scams
generally tried to get their suspect software installed using scare tactics and offers of free security checks, and
would then go on to persuade victims to pay for full versions with overblown and often entirely fictitious warnings
of malware infections. A simple summary of a typical attack pattern is on the McAfee blog
here,
and a nice chart of another attack system at the Panda blog
here.
Full details of the FTC action is in a press release here and
in further documentation available here. Comment on the events
is on Sunbelt's committed anti-rogue-software blog
here and
here.
11 December 2008
Tags:
exploit, microsoft, patch, patch tuesday, vulnerability.
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1 comment
I hope a class action lawsuit is put together against these people for all of the damage they've caused.
by Class Action, 01 January 2009, 15:57
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