“A recent raid by Russian police has revealed evidence that a company called ChronoPay is indeed behind the Mac OS X scareware program MacDefender, despite the company’s earlier denials,” Jacqui Cheng reports for Ars Technica. “But while the raid and the arrest of ChronoPay’s CEO may put a dent in the company’s profits, it’s unlikely that MacDefender or its variants will disappear just yet.”
“When we conducted our own investigation into MacDefender, we discovered that it wasn’t taking over the Mac world like some had predicted, but the scareware app had made its way into the general population to some degree. Apple soon began combating MacDefender on the OS level, and there hasn’t been much news about the malware/scareware since,” Cheng reports. “But as it turns out, whoever was behind MacDefender continued chugging along, raking in money from unsuspecting Mac users until Russian law enforcement descended on the ChronoPay office in late July.”
Cheng reports, “According to former Washington Post reporter and current security expert Brian Krebs… while the raid may slow down ChronoPay and its ilk from seeding fake antivirus software onto the Internet, the industry is far too profitable for scammers to stay away for long.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward Weber” for the heads up.]
What silly sausages.
Is Russina Boris’ half sister? Hey Ivan, we’re coming to raid your sister Russina’s ass!
No, MDN meant these people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusyns
Brian Krebs should be on the reading list of anyone interested in computer security issues. His material covers a wide range of issues, and is very readable.
I recommend highly.
http://krebsonsecurity.com
I read the article. It was a good read. Now for the punishment; will they be sent to a Gulag forever and was this a Russian version of Paypal??
Worse. No gulag punishment for the Russina’s, Boris’ half sister. This is what happens if you misbehave in Russina.
Is not this type of punishment still in practice in certain “very traditional” “elite” schools of UK?
Are you kidding? Have you forgotten who Brian Krebs is?
He was the asshat who got duped by those two Blackhatters that supposedly pwned a Macbook by using a fake Airport card or something like that Krebs supposedly watched them do it and vouched for their authenticity. Of course, he was shown to have been duped. Remember one of the Blackhatters said he wanted to stick lit cigarettes in Mac owners’ eyes. A real ‘tard.
Russian prison? These guys will soon be begging to go to a Turkish prison – that’s how bad they are.
I can’t find Russina on a map… no Canadna. Strange.
I tossed a couple corrective comments at the source article under my old nick ‘zunipus’. There is no need to repost them here among the cognoscenti. 😉