Scareware brings a lot of money

Antivirus XP rogue is one of those scareware software of which I blogged earlier. It claims that computer is infected and that user needs to pay $49.95 program for disinfecting the machine.

New York Times wrote recently that people who spread that program might get even $60,000 to $160,000 per month. Russian hacker NeoN had posted that information to Russian electronic bulletin board.

Problem with scareware/rogue programs is that they are always changing. When people learn learn to avoid certain rogue, a new one is already there.

Microsoft is after scareware makers

I think that everyone of us has seen popup "warnings" while surfing that can for example say "you have 350 errors in your registry. click here to fix them".

Most of those programs advertised in those popups are either useless or rogues.

Washington Post writes that Microsoft will sue Branch Software because of their Registry Cleaner XP.

Other scareware programs that Microsoft is interested about are Antivirus 2009, Malwarecore, WinDefender, WinSpywareProtect and XPDefender.