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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."
You know, on second thought, the better idea is just get a Mac. The average PC user will find it safer and they can do 99% of what they were going to do anyways.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
There are attacks which don't require your help; Sasser in particular goes through an open port rather than through Outlook or IE. There are a few others.
But that's pretty unlikely with a new PC, which presumably comes with the latest service packs. The article is incredibly short on actual data. There's nothing to support their 12-minute average. I get the impression that they chose the scariest headline to support an article which is mostly about phishing attacks, trojans, etc: attacks that require your help.
So for all I know they're talking about the fact that there are enough attackers that if you throw a Windows ME (or even unpatched XP) box on the Internet, yeah, you're hacked. That says a lot, but not about how insecure Windows is. It says that there are still plenty of computers running hacks like Sasser; if you're not protected against it, you're screwed.
That's mostly scaremongering, since unless you're installing a very out-of-date Windows, you're protected. You're not protected against new attacks, nor are you protected against many trojans. They're trying to convince you to buy software for that, which is relevant, by using scary but irrelevant numbers.
First Kaspersky, now Sophos... I've lost all respect for AV vendors. Using scare tactics to sell software is just sad.
Here's all it takes to keep your Windows box safe: a router (or SP2) and Firefox. Oh, and enough common sense to not run any executable file sent to you by a stranger.
There, I let the secret out.
smattawichu
I really find it quite ironic that there's so many MS apologists in this discussion willing to say that getting infected is the user's fault for being too stupid to have a commercial A/V package installed (at additional expense) and have a hardware firewall (at additional expense) between their system and the internet.
Yes, I know that AVG is free and very good, and Zone Alarm has a free version (I make sure both are on every MS box I have to look after).
But this ignores at least two problems. First, OEM PCs don't come with AVG or ZA, they come with Norton or Symantec or McAfee and a very short period of free support. Two months after you bring your new PC home and the new NetskyBlaster.z hits your hotmailbox, you're SOL. Why, if MS is so focused on improving security, do MS customers need to rely on 3rd party vendors for A/V security software?
Secondly, the firewall in XP SP2 is certainly an improvement over nothing at all (or over nothing useful, a category to which the the pre-SP2 firewall certainly belongs). So then why do I need to buy a $70 hardware firewall if XP has a firewall already?
Why does ZA tell me about so many more applications that want to reach the internet than the XP firewall? Why the hell does rundll need the internet (let alone Nero, or my printer for that matter), and why doesn't the XP firewall tell me about it?
For a commercial software vendor, MS's security record is beyond dismal. For a company that claims security as a priority, MS's poor performance would be laughable if it weren't so damned expensive and time consuming.
Why is it that Linux vendors can provide fully configurable firewalls that block anything and everything (if that's what you want) out of the box, but MS Windows insists on leaving open ports, enabling ActiveX, and phoning home to download updates whether you want it or not?
Why is it that wierdo hippy-commu-nazi Linux developers understand the difference between user and administrator but MS developers insist on every little widget having complete kernel access?
Why is it that MS thinks security is something to tack on to an OS through SPs, weekly downloads (with requisite reboots), patches, and 3rd party products, rather than something that is built into the code?
Lets talk apples to apples here. When we are talking about viruses/worms coming through open ports on a system running Linux, this is not a fault in *Linux*; this is other various open-source software running.
Its not Linux that has your port 25 open; it's sendmail or exim. Its not Linux that has your port 22 open; its openssh. With Windows *IT IS* the operating system that has those ports open.
It really depends on your distro how secure the system will be out of the box. What software is enabled, what configuration settings that system has.
For example, Redhat ships SSH with default settings to downgrade the connection to v1 if v2 fails. This leaves Redhat open to SSH1 attacks. A system like Debian does not allow SSH1 by default.
Some distributions are secure, some are not. You cant lump them all together. And you cant blame the kernel for the shortcomings of some other open source software. Put blame where blame is deserved.
Secondly, with regard to malware - Linux systems are much less vulnerable simply because we dont surf the web or run our systems as the root or Administrator user. Yes, running as a limited account on Windows accomplishes the same thing, but less people actually do it.
My cable modem isn't a modem at all.
Well, since we're on Slashdot, technically, it is a modem. It takes analogue signals and figures out digital data from them. It modulates and demodulates. Your cable modem just don't happen to be NAT'ing. Think of it as one long ethernet cable to your ISP.
In my experience, most cable (as in television land-based cables) modems behave this way, which I find quite pleasant. Any box on your network can be reached from the outside, without funky NAT-routing. In fact, you can probably just keep asking for IP-addresses, and the modem will happily give you true, Internet-routable IP's. Enjoy.
Now, would some people argue, NAT is great for your average Windows user, who probably don't want or need his machine available from the outside. This is the wrong way of solving problems. Any remotely modern operating system should be able to safely stay on the Internet, given a bit of care (read: patching). Furthermore, your average Windows user will often need Internet-routable IP-addresses - think Bittorrent, any P2P, remote desktop and so on.