Posted on 06/23/2011 10:10:41 AM PDT by decimon
The FBI has shut down two international cyber crime operations focused on the distribution of scareware applications and responsible for over losses of over $74 million.
Under the name "Operation Trident Tribunal," the FBI, assisted by law enforcement agencies from Ukraine, Latvia, Germany, Netherlands, Cyprus, France, Lithuania, Romania, Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, have seized 40 computers, servers, and bank accounts belonging to the gangs responsible.
One ring targeted by this law enforcement action is thought to have tricked 960,000 victims into buing licenses for fake antivirus programs at a price of up to $129.
The gang used various methods to trick users into downloading and installing the rogue applications, including displaying fake security alerts and malware scans on web pages. The damages are estimated at $72.
In addition, two Latvian nationals were indicted in Minneapolis for setting up a phony advertising agency and buying advertising space on legitimate websites for malicious purposes.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.softpedia.com ...
Click here ping.
Good. I hope they execute these vermin. Their malware is a royal pain in the arse to get rid of.
Do they mention the specific software “products” involved?
I just got one of these the other day. These are the *worst* of the spywares imo.
They’re semi-easy if you know what you’re doing and can get to safe mode with malwarebytes running, but otherwise you’re looking at an OS reinstall sometimes.
I think I feel for that one some years back...
“The damages are estimated at $72.”
Doesn’t seem too bad!
Was it called “Think Point”? That ruined my Thanksgiving last year trying to get that S*** off my dell
Beware of anything that offers a one-time scan of your PC for any reason.
An immediate shutdown and reboot into Safe Mode is required. The good ones won’t let you launch Malwarebytes or even access the Task Manager to kill it.
Nasty stuff!
Doesn’t seem too bad!
The article has some typos. I guess that $72 is the $72 million in the title.
Whenever I get a virus warning message, I immediately exit whatever I was running and do a total scan using my legitimate anti-virus program. I currently use ESET, but I have used Norton and McAfee in the past.
I have three that I rely on. AVG which is running all the time, and Ad Aware, and Malwarebytes. I run the other two on occasion. It seems that what one program doesn’t pick up, the other one will.
Sometimes the way to get good judgement is by having bad judgement. My judgement's pretty good on that issue now. Actually, very good :)
I know dec! Was just pullin’ your string!
Best,
Bogie
Ouch, my mom almost did that once but thankfully asked me. Turned out she had some rootkit and I just said to heck with it and formatted/reinstalled. I got rid of the fake virus scanner but the rootkit was something else that was virtually impossible to clean. XP is a nightmare for those things. I recommend people go to 7 if their hardware can support it because it’s endlessly better for this stuff.
Yup. Cleaned off 3 machines infected with this. Took hours to clean, running Spybot S&D several times and uninstalling multiple add-ons that allow it to be downloaded.
This caught my Mom, and she paid them. I was so mad I could spit. I can't tell you how many times I told her to call me FIRST! I still had to clean up that machine, and I didn't get any money for it.
SIGH!!
Volunteer here to either throw the switch or pull the trigger or give the horse a slap on the rear.
I disinfect friends and relatives computers for free and I've been a busy little bee the last 4 months.
My girlfriend’s kid got one of these last week. The computer is hosed and is gonna need the OS installed.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware helped me remove a particular virulent batch of this that my regular anti-virus software could not remove and it was free.
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