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UK Officially The Most Hacked Country
_Hellfire_ writes "Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report for the second half of 2004 says that the UK is leading the rest of the world with bot networks. The report states that "...25.2% [of bots] are located in the UK. That now puts the country ahead of the US (24.6%), China (7.8%), Canada (4.9%) and Spain (3.8%)". Symantec blames a sudden uptake of residential broadband connections without the awareness of the required security measures."
"Most hacked" is not the English translation of "largest percentage hacked". "Most hacked" would refer to the largest quantity hacked. The proper English translation of that statistic is "most hacky" - even if I did just make up "hacky".
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make install -not war
When you go out and buy a new XP PC, or have to reinstall it using the restore CD.. and if you;re a clueless noob like most surfers, that's when you find that NAT is the answer.
A lot of zombifying malwares DO spread by direct infection of unpatched machines. Those 30 mins it takes to download patches are the time in which NAT is a lifesaver. Of course it should always be accompanied by software firewalling to control outgoing connections.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I don't really agree re weak typing, though. It's not really weak typing that's at issue, it's that memory management is still done "by hand". Most of the nasty overflows stem from the fact that C lets you copy a 200 char long buffer into (and over the end of) a char[20]. There are other related issues, but I don't think weak typing is one of them. Weak typing is dumb, yes, but I think manual memory management is the real culprit.
Also, while ISPs can't track down all the compromised machines, some simple steps can massively reduce the damage:
My ISP does all of this, and more. It's really only the responsible thing to do, and I don't expect it costs them a large amount of time. The biggest cost is probably slightly smarter and more powerful routers.
Furthermore the figure seems far too low.
The figure is only for bot nets, which are a far more disruptive compromise than your standard trojan. A chunk of spyware on your own pc only hurts you, a zombie pc can be used to phish lots of cc numbers from unsuspecting suckers. I'm sure if you count spyware and the like, the number will skyrocket, but you start to get into grey areas when the spyware was installed by the user himself, willingly clicking through a long EULA.
it wouldn't matter if us had 1000 times more the people.
it's a percentual stat.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Or you can buy a bottle of Leffe tripple gold at 8.4% and it tastes good on the FIRST drink. Gotta hand it to the Belgians on that one.
THe percentage given is not the percentage of computers in the country that have been compromised..
It's the percentage of compromised computers that originate in that country.
On a given bot-net, there are more computers from the UK than the US. Given that the UK is much smaller than the US, this is significant.
What else can you do?
1) Use Firefox as your web browser rather than IE. Firefox has some security issues too, but many fewer than IE. Keep your browser software up-to-date.
2) Disable Java Applets in your web browser unless you reall need them (I don't mean JavaScript).
3) If you can do without the advanced features of MS Outlook, use an alternative email program like Thunderbird.
4) Download and install AdAware and/or Spybot SD and run them regularly, and update them often.
5) Turn-on Windows update and make sure you keep your systems patched.
6) Keep your AV software of choice up-to-date (I don't know 'Avast' but I'm sure it should be able to auto-update).
7) Most importantly, use some kind of firewall. Ideally a hardware one built into your ADSL modem or router. Failing that, a software one, like the one built into Win/XP, or one of the may commerical, or free ones).
Sorry, don't have time to post the links for any of this stuff, just Google for them.
Except that the signatures are lightyears behind ... Panda: Updates once a day, Trend: updates every 3 hours. Symantec: Every TWO WEEKS.
Two weeks is simply unacceptable. Contrary to their literature, Symantec does *NOT* take security seriously.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
"Is the US public that far behind in broadband connections?"
Yup.
Most people:
a) don't see the need
b) can't afford it
Ok, but is symantec updating their defs every 1-2 days? Trend updates 2 or 3 times a day on slow days. I was under the impression that symantec updates their defs like once a week.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The infrastructure of the US is seriously lacking. The UK is much further ahead in terms of available speeds and cheaper service.