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Microsoft Files Suits Against "Malvertisers"
eldavojohn writes "Reuters is bringing us news of five civil lawsuits filed by Microsoft against 'Soft Solutions,' 'Direct Ad,' 'qiweroqw.com,' 'ITmeter Inc,' and 'ote2008.info' that allege they 'used malvertisements to distribute malicious software or present deceptive websites that peddled scareware to unsuspecting Internet users.' Microsoft's Tim Cranton outlined the suits and provided links to all the filings for download. 'Cranton added that names of specific individuals behind these activities were not known and the lawsuits were being filed to help uncover the people responsible.'"
These activties hurt Microsoft's reputation as well as being a huge burden to users of their products. Microsoft has the money and power to put the hurt on the bad guys. This is win win.
You can blame "insecurity" of Windows all you want, but do you actually have an answer to how to make it better then? Before all the usual arguments come:
- These malware work just aswell on user account, you do not need admin/root access.
- Locking up the whole OS so that user is in 100% controlled environment is a no go, as seeing here on slashdot about iphone and other systems that do it.
- Malware goes where the user is. If linux had ~95% marketshare on desktops, majority of malware would be there because thats where the users are.
- Theres nothing on Linux that does anything to prevent this kind of malware - you only get more security because there's not many users. If you suggest everyone moving to it, what happens?
- Conficker excluded, theres not really exploits in the Windows itself now a days. They're mostly from third party software like Flash and PDF reader.
This isn't about OS security, its about user stupidity to install random crap. That wouldn't change even if the OS marketshare would be different.