Rogueware, the new malice in malware

How much does cybercrime pay? A lot apparently--if you engage in selling "rogueware," or antivirus scam programs, according to Panda Security. Rogueware essentially tricks computer users into shelling out their hard-earned dough in order to fix a purported malware problem. Based on a cost ranging between $49.95 and $79.95 per scam, Panda estimates that up to $34 million per month is changing hands around the world as a result of rogueware--no small figure given the nonexistent software and services.

And the ultimate irony here? Some of the victims might even think that the rogueware has successfully eliminated a problem that their legitimate antivirus applications was not able to resolve, causeing them to remove their existing antivirus protection now that "they've found something better."

And what's more, scammed folks are unlikely to realize it too. Now that more users are getting acclimated to the Internet, many computer users are at a stage where they think they know enough not to "trouble" more tech-savvy people about actions. So these victims pay up, see the problem go away, and they continue using their computer without being the wiser for it.

So far, Panda says it has identified 200 different families of rogueware through Q2, which relies on polymorphic techniques to create hundreds of thousands of variants to make detection by antivirus vendors difficult. Added to the fact that they don't do anything bad really--certainly no deletion of file or reporting back to a botnet node--makes the task that much harder to properly detect and eliminate rogueware. - Paul Mah