Our colleague, George Moore, was recently made a resource person on the article “Rogue security software on the rise” published in vnunet.com regarding Rogue Security Applications. Rogue Security Applications (sometimes also called Rogue Anti-Spywares) are called as such because they pretend to be valid security softwares. This masquerade begins when a user visits an ill-meaning web site serving pop-up ads with false claims of an infection present on the machine. Of course this claim is not true, and serves only to scare the user into buying the software for around $39.95 – $49.95. The user is not only wasting his money to clean an infection that was never there, but is basically buying a spyware/adware!

These threats carry quite a unique business model with a fairly sizable pay off for the risk, no wonder we’re seeing a gradual increase of these types of malicious software!

Statistics based from Housecall – Trend Microâ??s free web based malware scanner â?? concur. The saturation of such threat model is working and rising. Since the beginning of 2006 rogue security applications have slowly climbed their way to around 10% of all infections recorded.

As usual, it takes user awareness to combat these types of threats. Do not trust web sites notifying you that your computer is infected. Unless of course you’re using Housecall or any reputable online scanner. Do a background check first before you buy any software, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of trouble.