Evidence of mass-market small-loss scamming
The Anti-Phishing Working Group recently estimated that 485,000 samples were detected in the first six months of the year, which is more than five times the total detected for the whole of 2008.Symantec has found as many as 250 different cases of fake anti-virus and scareware scams that are being distributed through 200,000 web sites across the globe.
Cyber criminals could be pocketing up to £850,000 from the scams, the security vendor speculates in a new report on the phenomenon, suggesting that its findings indicate 43 million people were duped into paying for false security software in the year ending June 2009.
David Wall, a criminal psychologist and an expert in cybercrime working at the University of Leeds said of the findings, “Not only have we seen an explosion of activity in the last six months or so but these operation have become almost silky smooth. It has become a form of cybercrime that is almost wholly automated. Once a computer has become infected, the scammers don’t need to be involved in seeing the crime through.”
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