2010 Was the Busiest Year for Scareware Authors

According to a report from Panda Security, as much as 40% of fake antivirus programs ever created were released this year and infected over 5% of all computers in the world.

This type of applications, which are collectively known as scareware or rogueware, originally appeared four years ago. However, they only became prevalent in 2008.

Panda claims that a total of 5,651,786 unique scareware variants are known, of which 2,285,629 alone were discovered since the beginning of 2010.

That's a huge number and the holiday season, which is one of the most active periods of the year as far as cybercriminal activity is concerned, is yet to come.

To further outline the scope of the problem, the Spanish security vendor reveals that, at this moment, 11.6% of all samples in its 21-year-old malware database are fake antiviruses.

The company's statistics also show that 46.8% computers in the world were infected this year with some form of malware and that 5.40% of them were affected by scareware.

The most common fake anitivirus families by number of infections are SystemGuard2009 (12.51%), MSAntiSpyware2009 (11.67%), MalwareDoctor (8.14%), AntimalwareDoctor (7.21%), AntivirusPro2010 (4.57%), SecurityMasterAV (3.62%), Adware/SecurityTool (3.38%), ISecurity2010 (2.81%) and SecurityEssentials2010 (2.39%).

Scareware is distributed through a variety of methods. For example, scareware creators pay botnet herders to deploy their applications to already compromised computers for a fee, in what is known as a pay-per-install scheme.

Another popular distribution method is black hat search engine optimization (BHSEO), where scareware websites are artificially pushed at the top of search results for popular keywords.

The ultimate goal of these programs is to scare users into paying for unnecessary licenses. This is done by bombarding them with fake security alerts about fictitious infections allegedly found on their systems.

According to Panda Security, scareware schemes generate a combined income of $34 million a month (approximately $415 million a year).