Dan McCann talked about scareware in one of the very first articles published on this site.  To review, 'scareware' is a particularly evil form of malicious software.  Scareware will pop up a warning that tells you that your computer is infected with viruses, then it will offer to fix these viruses if you download a program and pay an activation/licensing fee.  Now, here is the problem - you were never really infected with those viruses, rather, you were caught up in a very convincing, thoroughly scary kind of scam.

Yesterday, Panda Labs released some research into scareware (though they call it rogueware).  "The Business of Rogueware" contains some very interesting statistics on the growth of this new kind of scam.  This fake anti-virus software is growing at an incredible pace.  Consider these numbers:

• in the first quarter of 2009, more scareware strains were created/detected than in all of 2008
• approximately 35 million computers are infected with scareware every month.
• cyber-criminals make an estimated $34 million per month through these kinds of attacks

The last number makes me especially angry.  The global economy is in pretty rough shape.  Unemployment rates are soaring.  And innocent computer users are being conned into giving away their hard earned money.  I'm going to finish this post by quoting Dan McCann, "they (the cyber-criminals involved in this sort of scam) should be charged to the fullest extent of the law. These types of marketing are a disgrace to the legitimate security community."