During the past few weeks, some top fake AV promotion programs either disappeared or complained of difficulty in processing credit card transactions for would-be scareware victims: Fake AV brands such as Gagarincash, Gizmo, Nailcash, Best AV, Blacksoftware and Sevantivir.com either ceased operating or alerted affiliates that they may not be paid for current and future installations.
...
The disruption appears to be partially due to an international law enforcement push against the fake AV industry. In one recent operation, authorities seized computers and servers in the United States and seven other countries in an ongoing investigation of a hacking gang that stole $72 million by tricking people into buying fake AV.
There may be another reason for the disruption: On June 23, Russian police arrested Pavel Vrublevsky, the co-founder of Russian online payment giant ChronoPay and a major player in the fake AV market.
ChronoPay employees (or Pavel Vrublevsky) were known to be involved in MacDefender, a fake antivirus software targeting less-savvy Mac users.
This could by why MacDefender had virtually disappeared and no new variants have been detected since.
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.19) Gecko/20110707 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.13 Firefox/3.6.19
