PEBKAC Still Plagues PC Security

Billosaur writes "ARS Technica is reporting on a study release by McAfee and the National Cyber Security Alliance (as part of the beginning of National Cyber Security Awareness Month) that suggests when it comes to PC security, the problem between the keyboard and the chair is even worse. PEBKAC has always been a problem, but the study highlights just how prevalent it has become. 87 percent of the users contacted said they used anti-virus software, while 70 percent use anti-spyware software. Fewer (64 percent) reported having their firewalls turned on, and only 27 percent use software designed to stop phishing attempts. Researchers were allowed to scan the computers of a subset of the users, and while 70 percent claimed to be using anti-spyware software, only 55 percent of the machines of those users scanned showed evidence of the software."

Comments

Use Free Software. Re:And the solution is.. WRONG.

[Erris]

That you have to know such details is evidence of the complete security failure of non free software vendors.

Worse, you are wrong. You can avoid IE because it's embedded in many applications and it's far from the only hole you need to worry about. In most tests there is no operator, just a default install plugged to the net.

Free software is not perfect but it's much better than windows. While windows takes 12 minutes on average to become part of someone's botnet, GNU/Linux systems typically take months. Even if this is only due to the "popularity effect" it's not likely to change because there are so many different GNU/Linux distributions that vary build options and order of software load. GNU/Linux will never be the kind of easy monoculture target that Windoze is and it's users will always be better off.

Just cleaned some malware off Linux

[Max Littlemore]

Yeah, and there could be a huge Linux virus epidemic.

There is. Just about every Linux distro you could name, apart from Studio64 because it's stupid, leads users to install and recommend Linux distros to other users. As far as I know, they all include ed.

There's your malware propagation right there. Whilst ed doesn't harm your actual PC, it is so horrendously damaging to the PEBKAC (Person or Entity Between ... etc) that it is by far the most dangerous malware in all history.