400,000 PCs Infected With Fake "Antivirus 2009"

nandemoari writes "The second month of Microsoft's campaign against fake security software has resulted in the removal of the rogue "Antivirus 2009" application from almost 400,000 infected PCs. Microsoft claims that December's version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) — the free utility included in Windows Update every month — specifically targeted 'Antivirus 2009.' According to Microsoft, MSRT removed the rogue application from over 394,000 PCs in the first nine days after it was released on December 9."

Comments

what this really says..

[purpleraison]

This is more a comment about people not wanting to pay significant sums of money on an annual basis to the antivirus companies.

Quite honestly, I never had a concern about this until I had to install AV software on 7 computers.

It's bad enough they nail you for $30 to $90 for software, but then next year they want you to fork it over again.

We would all be better served if free antivirus software became the mainstream, and costly software for corporate use. Sure, AVG is alright, but with Windows being so crappy, why isn't serious antivirus/anti-trojan software distributed with it instead of trial-ware Symantec?

All the remaining Vista installs were infected?

[Sfing_ter]

So wait, they are admitting that all the remaining Vista installs were infected by this malware?

Increasingly accurately named series of MS apps

[alien-alien]

First there was DOS... Denial Of Service.
Then there was WinXP... "XP" is an emote-icon for dead with tongue hanging out.
Then WinCE... Read it and wince.

Now MSRT... a Malicious, Software Removal Tool (note the comma)