In the second month of a campaign against fake security software, Microsoft has booted the rogue application "Antivirus 2009" from almost 400,000 PCs, the company recently claimed.

December's version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), a free utility that Microsoft pushes to Windows users as part of Patch Tuesday, targeted one of the most popular phony security app, Antivirus 2009. According to Microsoft, the MSRT erased the fake from over 394,000 PCs in the first nine days after it released this month's edition on Dec. 9.

Last month, Microsoft trumpeted a similar cleaning operation against another family of bogus security software that it said had purged nearly a million machines of programs like "Advanced Antivirus," "Ultimate Antivirus 2008" and "XPert Antivirus."

December's campaign targeted a different family -- dubbed "W32/FakeXPA" by Microsoft -- that includes fake security software going by names such as "Antivirus XP," "AntivirusXP 2008" and "Antivirus 2009."

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Edit (Spy):  I'm really glad they've done this but it's a move that's come too late.  I've personally had to deal with trying to remove this software and it's a nightmare.  Microsoft need to be far more responsive when dealing with these threats.  If they are going to select them for removal that decision needs to be made quicker.  It's the same thing with their anti-spam offering for Exchange.  Those updates are far less regular and agressive than they need to be....IMHO!  :-)

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