US Reigns As Most Bot-Infected Country

Trailrunner7 writes "The US has by far the highest number of bot-infected computers of any country in the world, with nearly four times as many infected PCs as the country in second place, Brazil, according to a new report by Microsoft. The quarterly report on malicious software and Internet attacks shows that while some of the major botnets have been curtailed in recent months, the networks of infected PCs still represent a huge threat."

Microsoft Did the Report?

[DarkKnightRadick]

I'm sure they failed to mention the OS with which most infected computers are running. :p

this

[buddyglass]

Exactly. Here [microsoft.com] are Microsoft's statistics after computer prevalence is taken into account. Quote from that page:

Among locations with more than 200,000 executions of the MSRT in 2Q10, Turkey had the highest infection rate, with 36.6 computers cleaned for every 1,000 MSRT executions (CCM 36.6). Following Turkey were Spain (35.7), Korea (34.4), Taiwan (33.5), and Brazil (25.8). All have been among the locations with the highest infection rates for several periods.

Locations with the lowest infection rates include Belarus (1.3), Bangladesh (1.5), Sri Lanka (1.8), Tunisia (1.8), and Morocco (1.9).

Given the very low infection rate of most of Africa, though, something tells me Microsoft's "CCM" metric may not perfectly reflect real infection rates.

IT staff

[NetNed]

Could it be from the down playing of hiring a proper IT staff that actually knows what they are doing, or paying a professional that knows how to properly remove and repair things? Sure most reading this know to run scans of up to date tools to remove infections on PC's, but in my experience most put up with it till performance is to the point of crippling the PC or network. Then a outside IT is called in and sometimes is treated like they are somehow to blame for the issues they are experiencing and try and use that as an excuse for not hiring a real IT person that actually knows what security is about. Of course this is for smaller sized business, but I have seen things as stupid as this in larger sized companies that think they are really saving something by having a secretary or high school kid run their network.

Re:Microsoft Did the Report?

[shadowbearer]

  Which is only a small fraction of the real infections out there. I've cleaned thousands of infected computers since MS introduced that tool, and I've yet to see one which the tool dealt with adequately.

  (Don't bother to say "Yeah, but if it dealt with it, you wouldn't see the computer!" If they really believed that tool was effective, then Microsoft wouldn't include the warning "you don't appear to have an antivirus solution installed" in their security center warning, now, would they?)

SB

Re:this

[Anonymous Coward]

1) The highest country had only a 3.66% detected infection rate. I think this really shows how ineffective the malware removal tool is. Judging by the non IT run computers that I come in contact with, approximately 100% are filled to the brim with toolbars, random processes, and odd start up programs. 2) Africa's number is only so low because you can't cure AIDS.

Re:Microsoft Did the Report?

[Eskarel]

MSE is free, available on every OS back to XP and as from my personal experience and research actually works. They're certainly far better than any other free AV solution available and I've seen it pick up stuff which broke Norton, all without requiring an extra core just to run your AV program.

Not sure what the heck you mean about business accounts or high dollars since the app is free.