Vendor Develops Malware to Promote their Own Products

Chinese antivirus software companies appear to use a unique tactic for keeping their products and services in demand, as reported by December 20, 2010. They secretly develop potential intrenet vulnerabilities themselves and launch them on the web world and then they finally promote their products and services to identify and delete them. It's also a good moneymaking approach and is quite fruitful.

This is apparently a distinguished secret in the web industry, and this approach has been highlighted during the latest territory war among two Chinese antivirus firms - Rising Antivirus and Eastern Micropoint. This war led to 11 months detention of Micropoint's VP (vice-president) Tian Yakui. Further, it also led to the death sentence of Yu Bing, Director of the Internet monitoring department of Beijing's Municipal Public Security Bureau. He was charged for accepting bribes in exchange for his part in the antivirus software scam.

Yu Bing, committed frauds worth 4.52 Million Yuan. He further took bribe 12.38 Million Yuan from four different network companies, including a supposed 4.2 Million Yuan bribe from top Chinese anti-virus vendor Rising.

In turn, Yu Bing initiated a fake investigation in opposition to Micropoint, an antivirus firm whose founders Liu Xu and Tian Yakui were earlier employed with Rising. Micropoint was incorrectly charged for circulating malware to promote business. Tian was held accused for the made-up malware circulation scheme and incorrectly charged for compromising secrets related to trade. The charges were being utilized to pressurize Liu into selling the firm to Rising.

Consequently, Micropoint was closed on the orders of Yu, and he ensured that China's single anti-virus testing unit would decline its request for evaluation to gain proper certifications.

Besides, Yu made wrong use of his designation by releasing a warning letter to the netizens regarding a particular computer virus, and suggesting them to utilize Rising's software to fix and repair their systems.

Commenting on the whole matter, security experts stated that the alleged approach, was utilized by almost every antivirus vendors in the 1990s; however usage of this technique has reduced since 2000. Though it appears that it is still being utilized by some of the anti-virus vendors, the virus, which Micropoint was charged for developing and launching into the web world, was supposedly developed by Rising.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/7/2011