Rouge Security Infections on the Rise

     It seems lately that all of my friends, family and clients have come to me with a machine infected with rouge Security software.  I spoke with a friend of mine who is in software engineering, who told me he had 6 laptops strewn out across his desk each with a different rouge security software infection.  Rogue security software, or "scareware," is software that pretends to be legitimate security software. These rogue applications provide little or no value and may even install malicious code or reduce the overall security of the computer.  It installs and pops up false warnings and alerts, urging you to puchase their software to remove them. Unsuspecting users usually end up purchasing the same virus infecting their computer.

    According to a new report (PDF) from Symantec: the company’s new Report on Rogue Security software says that in the year between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009 Symantec received a whopping 43 million reports of attempted installations of fake security programs.  And the future looks bleak as well. It is predicted that the sheer number of rouge security software will escalate quickly. The APWG's (Anti-Phishing Working Group) numbers for the first half of the year show that the organization’s members detected 485,000 samples, more than five times the total for the whole of 2008. 

It has gotten so big that Microsoft has taken notice of the trend, so much that most of their December's version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) they have dedicated to targeting rouge security. So now that the big companies are involved, it should be stamped out soon, right? Well, not really. Even when actions are taken against these companies they seldom influence them to shut down completely. “TrafficConverter.biz was forced offline at the end of November, but it was resurrected just a few days later at TrafficConverter2.biz. The site to this day boasts at least 500 active affiliates, all pushing a new rogue product called Antivirus360.”-(Washington Post)

    There are a couple free tools out there that can be used to pry these applications out of your computer, but sadly it is never easy. Google has plenty of links on how to remove your particular flavor of rogue security software. But here is a list to get you started and hopefully keep you and your data protected.

Free tools to clean your computer:

• Super Anti Spyware
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
• Spybot Search and Destroy

A list of known rogue security software can be found here, courtesy of Wikipedia.