Win 7's Malware Infection Rate Climbs, XP's Falls 250
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%."
And this is a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
What would one expect as usage of XP decreases and Win7 increases?
Re:And this is a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
What would one expect as usage of XP decreases and Win7 increases?
The changing usage rate between the two OS's is controlled for. FTFA: It's infection rate per 1000 machines.
Sensationalist article much? (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA: As ComputerWorld reports, during the second half of 2010, the data shows that 32bit Windows 7 computers were infected at an average rate of 4 PCs per 1,000, compared to 3 PCs per 1,000 that took place during the first half of 2010.
A difference of 1 thousandth is beyond statistical significance. How did this entry even get to the frontpage? It boggles the mind.
Re:RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And this is a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
The changing usage rate will also drive malware authors to concentrate on Win7.
So newer is NOT better? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And this is a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
While it's possible for user to be misguided, the majority of errors come from the computer being complicit in allowing bad actions to happen merely so that a fringe of "convenience" can let users operate without having to remember their passwords, for instance.
Marketing wins over engineering, and THAT'S why you have crap OS's and apps that have exploits attached, like burrs. Walled gardens from single corporations aside, communities SHOULD run app-repositories of trusted code and that's obvious. Bad engineering, both technical and social...
Re:And this is a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are three ways people get owned: remote exploits (count the number on 7 vs linux in the past 2 years - they're not so far apart), application exploits (again, count em) and user stupidity (no solution, other than sandboxing the user to contain the damage).
Even with a sandboxed app, it still has access to all of the data you have in the sandbox. If you've downloaded and installed a "virus scanner" and enabled it to access your entire filesystem, you're fucked.
Re:And this is a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus, although in theory, on the test bench windows is more secure - in reality, there are a lot more Windows boxes getting owned, simply because the volume of expoits out there being developed, and the prevelance of them on the internet is much greater.
Look, i'm not disagreeing with the results you presented. I'm merely suggesting that in the real world you're a lot less likely to stumble across a trojan/exploit for your OS X box, because Windows is the focus of so much more exploit development.
Ditto for those still running, say Windows 98 or OS/2. No one codes exploits for it any more because its market share is so close to zero - yet its architectures is FAR less secure than Windows XP or 7.
Re:And this is a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Security through obscurity is nothing more than an illusion.
I always find this funny. Passwords, PINs, encryption/decryption keys, hardware tokens etc are all just forms of security through obscurity, too.. they just are a bit more obscure than running an an obscure OS when you use combinations of them, or pick a really good random password, etc.