MS AntiSpyware and AntiVirus

I was recently contacted by a friend who was having issues with his company laptop. He told me his support center (now in China) could not understand his plight. I asked him a few questions and it turns out he had been a victim of a drive-by install which is pretty odd since the company he works for constantly brags about it's security and technical expertise. Regardless I helped and solved his problem in under 20 minutes. 

Seen this?

Or maybe this?

These programs and ones similar to them are fraudulent anti-maleware and anti-virus programs designed to scare the user into buying a non-existent solution. They're so good in fact they fooled my test system into believing they were legit and needed an upgrade. (See below)

These two are linked to Russian sources just itching to take your credit card info and go nuts. How do you remove it? This is what I did on a Windows XP Service Pack 2 system.

Go to http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

Click the download button. Save it to your desktop. Once the download is complete run the setup and try to get the latest definitions (theres a tab called update). Once you're finished run a quick scan. You should see the following after it's complete.

It caught 15 results on the test system. Now click Show Results.

Make sure all of them are checked and click Remove Selected

I usually run the scan a second or third time before I'm 100% good to go.

Next up. Securing your system from this type of crap.