University of California at Santa Barbara researchers studied three major fake antivirus operations. The three operations amassed $130 million in revenue, UCSB researchers say. They studied after getting close to these secretive operations by capturing and studying their malware via honeypots. All three of the AV firms studied by UCSB gave out a limited number of refunds in order to appear legitimate. The researchers were able to dig through databases that spanned from March 2008 through August 2010, when they engineered access to the fake AV organizations’ servers.”]