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Acting on a Federal Trade Commission complaint, a federal court has imposed a $163 million judgment on a woman who allegedly helped run a scareware ring that tricked over one million consumers across six countries into purchasing fake security software. That decision, announced by the FTC Tuesday, came after a two-day bench trial last month. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett, who presided over the case, also wrote in his related judgment that the defendant, Kristy Ross, "shall be permanently restrained and enjoined from the marketing and sale of computer security software and software that interferes with consumers' computer use...

One of the most pervasive and costly types of virus is now affecting Mac computers, signalling the end of an age of innocence for Apple customers, who until now have been spared many common cybersecurity problems. Known as rogue antivirus or scareware, the scam programs warn PC and now Mac owners that they have been infected, then demand credit card payments to clean the machines. The operators of the programs are typically criminals who may resell the card details or try to install more malicious software. PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system have been besieged by scareware for years. Though...

TUESDAY, MAY 04, 2010 "U.S. Treasury Site Compromise Linked to the NetworkSolutions Mass WordPress Blogs Compromise" SNIPPET: "UPDATED: Saturday, May 08, 2010: 5 new domains have been introduced by the same gang, once again parked at 217.23.14.14, AS49981, WorldStream."

SNIPPET: "UPDATE: The Koobface gang is upgrading the command and control infrastructure in response to the positive ROI out of the takedown activities." SNIPPET: "Related posts: Dissecting Koobface Worm's Twitter Campaign Dissecting the Koobface Worm's December Campaign Dissecting the Latest Koobface Facebook Campaign The Koobface Gang Mixing Social Engineering Vectors"

MONDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2009 Celebrity-Themed Scareware Campaign Abusing DocStoc UPDATE: Docstoc has removed all the participating accounts in this campaign, and is applying additional filtering to undermine its effectiveness. Last week's "Celebrity-Themed Scareware Campaign Abusing DocStoc and Scribd" is now exclusively targeting the popular Docstoc document-sharing service. Naturally, this very latest campaign once again offers overwhelming evidence on the inner workings of the cybercrime ecosystem, in this particular case, the connection between the Koobface gang and money mule recruitment campaigns.

Note: The following text is a quote: Pop-Up Security Warnings Pose Threats The FBI warned consumers today about an ongoing threat involving pop-up security messages that appear while they are on the Internet. The messages may contain a virus that could harm your computer, cause costly repairs or, even worse, lead to identity theft. The messages contain scareware, fake or rogue anti-virus software that looks authentic. The message may display what appears to be a real-time, anti-virus scan of your hard drive. The scareware will show a list of reputable software icons; however, you can’t click a link to go...

Some scareware scammers building botnets, too (USA Today can only be linked to) Previous article: New twist on scareware locks up your PC

But Beyonce had one of the best hoaxes of all time Rumours of the death of rapper Kanye West in a car crash became fodder for fake anti-malware scams on Tuesday. Users searching for more info on the fictitious fatality (http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/10/21/kanye-west-died-car-crash-hackers-exploit-rumour/) are liable to get redirected to sites distributing scareware, security researchers warn. The rumour itself reportedly originated on notorious image board 4chan, the seeding ground for the Anonymous campaign against Scientology. Bogus reports, claiming West met his maker in a crash involving two luxury cars in Los Angeles, subsequently appeared in email as well as appearing on social network...

UPDATE: 4 hours after notification, Twitter has suspended the remaining bogus accounts. Until the next time, when the reCAPTCHA recognition gets cost-effectively outsourced for automatic scareware-serving purposes.

SNIPPET: "An ongoing blackhat SEO (search engine optimization) campaign is actively hijacking a variety of U.S Federal Forms keywords in an attempt to serve the Personal Antivirus (Trojan.Win32.FakeXPA) scareware." SNIPPET: "Disruption of the campaign is in progress."

Makers of fake anti-virus software are exploiting search engines to drive people to sites peddling 'scareware'. Using popular and mis-spelled search terms, the criminals divert people to sites that are seeded with fake warnings about virus infections. The pop-up warnings claim that a visitor's PC is riddled with malicious programmes and spyware. Research suggests some criminals are making as much as $10,000 a day from fake security software.

A Baltimore federal court judge ordered six absent defendants yesterday - including one from Maryland - to shut down Internet businesses that the Federal Trade Commission claims are part of a vast $100 million "scareware" scheme that tricked more than a million people into purchasing useless security software by making them think their computers were under attack. "The evidence in this case is quite overwhelming," said U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett. He also extended a freeze on the defendants' assets and signed an order requiring them to show why they shouldn't be held in contempt of court for missing...