As you may have noticed from our News and Events page, and our previous post, the Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC) held its public workshop last week in Washington, DC. Lavasoft’s own Janie “CalamityJane” Whitty (whom many of you may know from her work in the Lavasoft Support Forums) moderated this year’s Rogue Anti-Spyware panel.

Janie led the panel – which included Eric Howes of Sunbelt Software, Andy Hayter of ICSA Labs, Jeff Williams of Microsoft, and FTC Spam Coordinator Ethan Arenson –  through a lively discussion of the history of rogue security software, how these programs have proliferated in recent years and become better and better at deceiving users, and legislative efforts that have been taken. Take a look at the video of the panel discussion, which is available on the ASC’s website.

For more information on rogue security software, Malware Labs at Lavasoft has released two new white papers: “Combatting Twilight Zone Rogues” and “Fraud Tools and the Malware Economy.” The latter white paper is our most recent release, and includes statistics on the explosive growth in these fraudulent applications from 2005 to 2008, in addition to pinpointing countermeasures needed to combat their rise – a must read for anyone interested in this topic.