Dan McCann wrote an article on scareware nearly two months ago. To review, scareware is a particularly evil scam in which a popup appears on your screen and alerts you that you are infected with a virus (or twenty). Then, the popup suggests that you buy another program to fix that virus. The problem is that these viruses do not really exist on your system - these programs are utterly useless.

Yesterday, Avelino Rico Jr and Geok Meng Ong of McAfee released a report about a piece of scareware that recently evolved into ransomware. A new variant of "System Security 2009" has surfaced. This new threat starts off like scareware - it finds many threats and asks you to install a security program to fix those threats. Problem is, after you install "System Security 2009", you cannot open any applications - the software tells you that the files are infected and you have to activate your 'anti virus software' in order to proceed.

Basically, the fake anti virus product locks your files and forces you to pay money to open them again. I am going to echo Dan's sentiments and state that I hope they catch the people responsible for this and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Nothing makes me angrier than poor excuses for people who prey on the vulnerable.