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Clean System to Zombie Bot in Four Minutes

Posted by michael on from the takes-five-minutes-to-download-patches dept.

Amadaeus writes "According to the latest study by USA Today and Avantgarde, it takes less than 4 minutes for an unpatched Windows XP SP1 system to become part of a botnet. Avantgarde has the statistics in their abstract. Stats of note: Although Macs and PC's got hit with equal opportunity, the XP SP1 machine was hit with 5 LSASS and 4 DCOM exploits while the Mac remained clean. The Linux desktop also was impenetrable, but only was only targeted by 0.26% of all attacks." See also our story on the survival time for unpatched systems.

6 of 608 comments (clear)

  1. Oh, now it makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So this is why my new Dell tried to eat my brain this morning!

    1. Re:Oh, now it makes sense... by Darth_brooks · · Score: 5, Funny

      It tried, but once it got close to you it simpled turned away from your head and kept saying "Brains!"

      --
      There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
    2. Re:Oh, now it makes sense... by scaaven · · Score: 5, Funny

      Dude, you're getting a Zombie(tm)

      --
      I know I'm going to be modded up on this
  2. I call phooey. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm using my new unpatched XP system right now and it works gre45h3@#$!dd11f

    NO CARRIER

  3. Re:NAT by The+Snowman · · Score: 5, Funny

    "As long as you don't download crap off the internet or don't do port forwarding to an internal server, your NAPT router is a good defense."

    Which is why I was curious about its effectiveness for the typical user. I use Firefox, lock down the machine, don't install crap, and that machine is perfectly clean a year after its OS install.

    My wife's machine, however, is the opposite. AdAware choked because there were thousands of items (of course each piece of spyware has hundreds of items, so AdAware's list is misleading) and some that tried to prevent AdAware from running. I gave her a good talking to about installing crap from msn.com and visiting porn sites using IE. So I wound up sacrificing sex for a week so I would get a break from cleaning her computer. Sigh. Women.

    Anyway, my point is that I am not the typical user. NAT is an effective tool, but like any tool, it is only as good as the person wielding it.

    --
    24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
  4. Re:Wow... by The+Desert+Palooka · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's just the sort of thing a Zombie Bot would say!