According to Sean-Paul Correll, a security threat researcher with Panda, most online threats seen to date are created in Eastern European countries such as the Ukraine and Russia.
"This pretty much means that cybercriminals will not deliberately try to infect users in those countries. In fact, some older Rogueware samples were programmed to quit after detecting the Russian keyboard layout", he said in a security blog posting.
Correll added that his research team came across a Rogueware site that was completely constructed in Russian. The site claims to protect computers and social networking profiles against spam, phishing, viruses and hacking attempts.
As Correll notes, the question is why are these cybercriminals targetting their own countrymen when they purposely tried to avoid it in the past.
"My guess is that they are not making as much money as they used to. Anti-virus companies are improving detection and more users are becoming aware of the threat, therefore less victims are converting and the cybercriminals must be struggling to make what they used to", he noted.
Correll went on to say that, last year Panda estimated that cybercriminals behind Rogueware threats were making up to $34 million per month, but adds that it is now questionable how much they are making now.