VIRUSRAY, 1.8M Unsuspecting PC Users Likely To Lose Millions Of Dollars Between Now And Christmas 2007

As if we need any more proof of how well organized malware authors are or how little they fear the major brands of antivirus and antispyware products, along comes VIRUSRAY, specifically VIRUSRAY 3.8.EXE.

VIRUSRAY is the latest, meticulously timed generation of a long line of rogue antispyware products. Its sole purpose is to take $30 from each PC user. It all begins with a simply dropped infection which generates a system warning telling the user that their PC is badly infected and urging them to act fast and sort it out. The warning drives users to the VIRUSRAY.COM web site. They arrive at what they hope and believe to be a legitimate security vendor web site, complete with latest threat information and even details on the infection they seek to cure.

Many unsuspecting users then download the rogue antispyware product and choose to run the free scan. Surprise, surprise the scan finds tens or even hundreds of infections. Many users, relieved to have found a cure choose to buy the product. After purchase, the rogue product miraculously cleans the infection but most likely it is still infected and may well receive further infections.

Each rogue antispyware product is promoted this way over a period of 3 to 4 months. During that time our research shows that the antispyware web site will likely receive as many as 18 Million (yes Eighteen million) unique visitors, of which at least 10 % will download the product and may well proceed to pay for it.

Three months later the product and its related infection will inevitably caught by quite a few legitimate antivirus and antispyware products, including the top brands. Noticing the gradual decline in revenues the malware authors will withdraw the rogue product while simultaneously launching its successor which is always imprevious to being caught for the next 3-4 months, and so the cycle goes on.

VIRUS RAY, more specifically VIRUSRAY 3.8.EXE is a direct replacement for VirusLocker. Like clockwork the change over between the two products was so well executed that the malware authors suffered absoutely no loss of traffic or revenues.

There are very few legitimate companies that could plan a replacement product roll out to such perfection. Take a look at the following VIRUSRAY.COM Alexa traffic analysis for the last month to see just how well this was done.

To give you some idea of the scale of these rogue products. At peak during the first week in August 2007, according to Alexa.com web traffic analysis, VirusLocker.com (predecessor to VirusRay.com) had more than 50% of the number of unique visitors per day recorded for McAfee.com, the Worlds second largest security vendor!

Users, don't get fooled again. Use only reputable antivirus and antispyware products to remove VIRUSRAY.