That's the estimate of the annual income a dedicated crook could earn by pumping fake anti-virus software, dubbed "scareware" by some, said , director of malware research at

Stewart led an investigation into a Russian-based operation where affiliate members seed PCs with Antivirus XP 2008, recently renamed Antivirus XP 2009, then reap commissions of up to 90% on the software's $40 to $50 price tag. The program is virtually worthless, able to spot only a handful actual threats.

After convincing a real cybercrook to provide a recommendation to an affiliate program dubbed "Bakasoftware," Stewart accessed records that showed some members pulled in as much as $146,000 in just 10 days.

"We were able to convince another affiliate [of our bonafides], and got an invitation that let us see the back end of the affiliate site, and see how the promotion works," Stewart explained. Although the Bakasoftware program had been known to researchers, there had been little, if any, analysis done on its operation, since the program's site is in Russian and the invitation-only requirement for new memberships meant it was easy for the criminals to keep outsiders at arm's length.

During SecureWorks' investigation, Stewart also stumbled across messages posted on Russian forums by a hacker calling himself "NeoN," who claimed to have broken into the Bakasoftware administrative server. NeoN posted evidence that Bakasoftware affiliate members had raked in between $75,000 and $158,000 in one week.