The 12-minute Windows Heist

An anonymous reader writes "Sophos has come up with some pretty interesting research: apparently, there's a 50 percent chance unprotected Windows PCs will be compromised within 12 minutes of going online. Sophos came to that conclusion based on research covering the last six months of virus activity. The company said authors of malware such as spam, viruses, phishing scams and spyware have increased both the volume and sophistication of their assaults, releasing almost 8,000 new viruses in the first half of 2005 and increasingly teaming up in joint ventures to make money. The new-virus figure is up 59 percent on the same period last year."

Comments

Yawn

[AnotherEscobar]

More of the same for this place. I have had 3 publicly accessible systems up and running for over a year and a half. Many scripted login attempts and nothing has gotten through. I have 2 desktop systems used by my wife and kid. Nothing there and neither of them has gotten the concept down that SPAM is not a special offer 'just for them'. Even my moms XP (XP home even for christs sake) system is on DSL and has yet to have a problem.

Believe what you want, but 12 minutes my ass.

In the world of information /. is the friggin Weekly World News of, well, news and should carry a label on the main page: (Take your pick)

slashdot: For Entertainment Purposes Only
slashdot: Any resemblence to real news is purely coincidental
slashdot: And you thought the Democratic Party knew how to skew the facts!
slashdot: If we keep saying it enough, maybe everyone will switch to what we think is better and we'll all be considered kewl for 5 minutes

Come on!

[obeythefist]

What is this all about?

An unprotected windows box, hey?

This is pretty stupid. Windows boxes are firewalled by default (all new Windows XP/2K3 installs are firewall on by default. All Windows XP boxes connected by default - again, all of them - to Windows Update have SP2 installed and the firewall enabled). Sure there are some legacy PC's out there running Windows without protection - but we've already established that this is lunacy, just like not firewalling your Linux box is also lunacy.

What is the author trying to prove exactly? All people who go deep sea diving without basic scuba equipment drown within 12 minutes? Shock horror omg wtf?

This isn't news, it's anti-MS FUD. Why didn't the author mention that a properly protected (firewalled, AV'd) windows box will stay unviolated on the internet for as long as a properly protected (firewalled, AV'd) linux box wil? Because that isn't Slashdot's traditional anti-MS FUD, that's why.

Slashdot used to be a respectable news source. Dead horse flogging propaganda like this only removes journalistic credibility from slashdot.

Flame/Mod away.