Clean System to Zombie Bot in Four Minutes

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.

Comments

Re:NAT

[AviLazar]

BULL SHIT!!! You know you don't get sex even on her good days. ;)

Yeah, what a rip off.

[twitter]

"Linux users have the latest and greatest available all the time on the net" SP2 is also available on the net.

Better have a Mac or Linux to download it.

"CD publishers for five bucks or so" Five bucks? What a rip off. MS is sending out free SP2 disks AND paying the postage for those who ask.

Woot, a $0.25 CD and $0.37 in postage (if you ask for it). The second bug fix for a three year old OS. I'm underwhelmed by the generosity of people who try to charge between one and three hundred dollars for an OS that has yet to include something as basic as a spell checker.

I mentioned CDs because some people still use dial up. A single CD purchase and Dial up internet represent the minimal cost of getting a computer working and on the net. Getting a 650MB iso with the average dial up provider is a painful process even with intelligent downloading programs with auto resume and a $5.00 CD looks like a good deal. You can buy a lot of $5.00 CDs with the $20 a month price difference between dial up and "broadband". $5.00 covers the cost of making the CDs. The software is free, of course, and your local Linux User's Group usually has a library you can use to get started. The average person can keep their system updated on dial up. CDs and broadband represent maximum costs for people who like to have multiple choices of latest and greatest without much fuss.

When you consider the cost of legally owning multiple coppies of Winblows, even a big broadband spender like me is a winner. At any given time, I've got five computers up. Each of those machines has a specific set of tasks and does them well. The operating systems alone would have set me back $1,000. The software to do anything useful another $500 at the least. That's enough money for three years worth of cable bills, but my poor Winblows computers would have been blown out after the first 4 minutes or so.