My computer is infected with pop-up warnings and file scans telling me I have problems, and Internet Explorer has been hijacked to keep sending me to a website where I can "purchase the software." Pop-ups are coming from my taskbar, showing up in the middle of the screen, and rifling through my files with a fake scan. My computer is being held for ransom.

How did this happen? And what am I going to do about it? I mean really, as a security manager you'd think I would be immune to this kind of problem. My antivirus software is up to date and actively scanning, and my system is fully patched. That's more than most people are doing. Fortunately, I also have current backups (more on that in a minute).

I wrote that a week ago. As it turned out, I had to do a lot more work to get rid of this infection than I anticipated.

I started with some research on what FakeAV is all about. I've been hearing a lot about it through word-of-mouth, and now I'm getting firsthand experience. According to Sophos, FakeAV is a rapidly growing threat on the Internet, mainly because it's profitable to the people who wrote and distributed it. Evidently, a lot of people are being tricked into sending money to these criminals to get back control of their computers. I hate to think how many people are being fooled by this malware into thinking it's a legitimate security scan. It would be a lot easier to just send them the money to get back control of my system. But I'm not going to let these guys win.

This is clearly a very advanced program. It looks exactly like the real Windows Security Center. It appears to be professionally programmed, with none of the crashes or bugs prevalent among more pedestrian malware.