Vendor creates malware to sell its anti-malware product
Chinese antivirus software companies seem to have a unusual strategy for keeping its services and products in demand – secretly developing threats themselves and unleashing them online, then turning around and making their products detect and remove them.
This is supposedly a well known open secret in the industry, and the fact has come to light in the recent territory war between to Chinese antivirus companies – Rising Antivirus and Eastern Micropoint – which resulted in the 11 months long imprisonment of Micropoint’s VP Tian Yakui and the suspended death sentence of one Yu Bing, who used to be the director of the Internet monitoring department of Beijing’s Municipal Public Security Bureau.
According to The Register, Bing has allegedly been receiving bribes from Rising to push the company’s agenda and hinder that of Micropoint, which resulted in him mounting a sham investigation against Micropoint and falsely accusing their executives of releasing malware they have developed in the wild in order to boost their sales – and ended up with Tian’s incarceration.
Subsequently, Micropoint had been seized on Yu’s orders, sent to Rising and he made sure that China’s only antivirus testing facility would reject its application for assessment in order to receive the proper certifications.
Yu also used misused his position by issuing a warning to the public about a specific computer virus, and advising them to use Rising’s software to clean their computers.
Whether or not he deserved to be sentenced to death for his crime is debatable, but these revelations and ensuing comments by industry insiders have revealed that developing malware just to kill it is a “sound moneymaking strategy and makes good business sense”, reports The Epoch Times.
Supposedly, that was the main strategy used by most antivirus vendors in the 1990s, but has been used less and less after 2000. Although, it seems, is still used by some – the virus that Micropoint has been accused of developing and releasing into the wild, was allegedly created by Rising.