Win 7's Malware Infection Rate Climbs, XP's Falls

BogenDorpher writes "Microsoft released data today showcasing that Windows 7's malware infection rate has climbed by more than 30% during the second half of 2010, while the infection rate for Windows XP has dropped by more than 20%."

Re:Sensationalist article much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure you understand statistics very well.

Re:And this is a surprise?

[Missing.Matter]

While the article says that the number of Win7 infections have gone up while the number of WinXP infections has gone down, the infection rate on XP is still higher at 14 per 1000 compared to 4 per 1000 in Win7.

Re:Sensationalist article much?

[John Hasler]

That is not a difference of one thousandth. It is a difference of 33%.

Re:RTFA

[Penguinisto]

I have a HARD time believing that only 14 in 1000 windows XP machines are infected.

The reason why they came up with that number is in TFA:

"Microsoft calculated the infection rates using its Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) by detecting and deleting selected malware such as fake antivirus programs, worms, viruses, and trojans."

In other words, they used their internal tool, which would certainly not catch all the bugaboos lurking in a given box.

Re:UAC

[Man On Pink Corner]

I'm a little unclear on how authorizing on a per-application basis, using a hashed ID as the other user mentioned above, would open up a significant attack surface. I agree that UAC works, and that it isn't easily circumvented... but still, I should have the ability to disable it on a per-application basis, and optionally for any processes spawned by that application.

Obviously that''s an insecure practice on my part and should be done only with care, but turning UAC off entirely really does expose a huge attack surface, and that's what I'm doing now, along with a few million other Windows users who might or might not understand the implications of what they're doing.

Re:And this is a surprise?

[rhook]

Windows Vista/7 are already known to be much more secure than MacOS.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/15605/hacker_pwn2own_organizer_windows_7_is_safer_than_snow_leopard [computerworld.com]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/189760/hacking_impresario_windows_safer_than_mac.html [pcworld.com]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10444561-245.html [cnet.com]

Re:Except

[Brian Recchia]

Almost everybody who pirates Windows 7 does so using Windows Loader which, once they started encrypting it, has never been targeted by MSRT.