The Changing Faces of Rogue Security Programs
Submitted by Ken Dwight on
One of the most common forms of malware today is the Rogue Security Program, or simply "Rogue." These programs pop up on the user's computer, usually at the time of Windows startup, and claim to have found problems on that computer.
Early rogues represented themselves as anti-virus programs and typically displayed a list of threats allegedly found on this computer. In many cases they would appear to be running a scan, complete with a moving progress bar and a count of malware items detected.