Major Scareware Scams Cracked by the US Authorities

Police in the U.S.A. and 7 other nations confiscated PCs and servers utilized to operate a "scareware" scheme that estimated to be around US$72 Million from victims scammed into buying fake anti-virus software or scareware, as reported by Stuff on June 23, 2011.

The US Justice of Department (DOJ) stated that, twenty-two systems and servers were caught in the U.S.A and 25 others in the Netherlands, France, Latvia, Germany, Lithuania, Sweden and the United Kingdom, as reported by Stuff on June 23, 2011.

The suspects of the plan, who were not recognized, left "scareware" on the systems of 960,000 victims. The scareware would fake to look for harmful software on the system. The objective is to convince the user to reveal his/her credit card details voluntarily, promising to solve an unreal issue on the system.

Meanwhile, Latvian officials confiscated almost 5 bank accounts supposed to have been assessed by the masterminds of the scareware scam.

On June 22, 2011, the US officials stated that, they hampered a second scam, accusing two Latvians who were caught on charges of running a "malvertising" scheme to spread the phony scareware.

As per a statement from the DOJ, the two culprits identified as Marina Maslobojeva, aged 23 and Peteris Sahurovs, aged 22, reportedly established a forged advertising agency that sold online advertisements to innocent websites, which includes the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Officials informed that, after the ad started running on the website, the defendants changed the computer code in the ad so that the computers of visitors to startribune.com were infected with a harmful software program that launched scareware on their systems. Further, that operation resulted in $2 Million in losses, as reported by Los Angeles Times on June 22, 2011.

Assistant Director Gordon Snow of the FBI's cyber division stated that, scareware is one of the many methods that hackers are utilizing to con money from citizens and firms across the globe, as reported by Reuters on June 22, 2011.

Further, the indictments come in a period where cases of hacking and online theft have flooded the news. Some observers have claimed that law enforcement efforts are lacking behind the evolving world of cybercrime.

Related article: Macro Virus Deceive Users With Infected Word Document

» SPAMfighter News - 7/1/2011