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In Test, Windows 7 Vulnerable To 8 Out of 10 Viruses
As Windows 7's market share passes 3.6%, up from 1.9% the day before launch,
llManDrakell notes an experiment they did over at Sophos. They installed Windows 7 on a clean machine — with no anti-virus protection — with User Access Control in its default configuration. They threw at it the next 10 virus/worm samples that came in the door. Seven of them ran; UAC stopped only one baddie that had run in the absense of UAC. "Lesson learned? You still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7."
Next you'll be telling me that 8 out of 10 people who have unprotected sex with HIV-positive, syphilitic, sore-encrusted prostitutes will contract some sort of venereal disease.
Windows 7 had 1.9% market share before launch?
Sure - just that you won't get a virus by running linux. I have yet (in over a decade of tending linux and bsd servers) had a single machine get infected.
Lesson learned - friends don't let friends run Windows.
Anyone that installs Anti-Virus on their PC and expects it to protect them from their own stupidity deserves what they get.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
So 8/10 viruses don't require administrator permissions and conform to Windows development standards. If only the rest of the software industry had such high standards.
Anyone who uses any computer (including Mac AND Linux) without anti-virus is asking for what they get.
Yeah? Can you point to ONE virus in the wild that has ever bitten any Mac or Linux user? Trojans don't count. Install Linux on your Windows box and you do NOT need any antivirus (unless you boot into the Windows side), provided you're not stupid enough to run an executable from an untrusted source.
Free Martian Whores!
Why would you need an anti-virus if you have a router whose firewall is worth a damn, have a browser that doesn't develop un-patched exploits like college kids develop acne and you don't click and run every damn executable bit of code you see on web site?
If you have a good firewall and secure applications, the only remaining way to get a virus is if you download it and run it yourself.
Virus and virus-checker free for over 8 years.
...
Anyone who uses any computer (including Mac AND Linux) without anti-virus is asking for what they get.
Yep, I've been "asking for what I get", and getting what I ask for, by running Macs without anti-virus for almost 25 years now.
I use Avast Home Edition. It's free (just registration required), fast, and small-footprint.
Yeah, I'll pop that right onto my Macs, especially after reading these five-star reviews. Five reviews with one star each makes five stars, right?
I have yet (in over a decade of tending windows and NT servers) had a single machine get infected.
Lesson learned - Give the same system rights to your windows users as your Linux users have, and they can't get infected even if they wanted to.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
New tests show that software written for Windows runs on Windows! Copycat studies have also shown conclusively that software written for Macs run on Macs and software written for Linux runs on Linux! More at 11.
No, people who run shit they shouldn't are asking for what they get.
I don't run a real-time scanner, it's too much of a resource hog, I do let AV do an overnight scan once a week though. I've done this for years and never had a virus. Why? Because I don't run shit I know may not be safe to run. I do not open attachments I was not expecting to recieve.
It's not as if AV software is even that effective anyway, even when it does detect threats half the time it fails miserably at dealing with it and just gives the option of deleting, and sometimes some AV software doesn't even manage that. The paradigm used for AV software is that which has been used for a couple of decades, and it never even worked particularly effectively back then, let alone now that viruses have evolved whilst AV software really hasn't. Again, the best option is really to cover all the attack vectors - don't run executables you don't trust, don't have Javascript enabled on sites you can't be sure are safe, don't open attachments you weren't expecting and so on.
Out of curiosity, how exactly do you verify that you are infection free without a scanner? Sure, you probably don't have anything overt, like a botnet hijack, but what about less obvious things like rootkits?
You should probably take your magical ninja virus detection powers and do some consulting for those poor bastards who run Norton....
The corollary to that rule is that many applications won't run because they're poorly architected and require administrative rights to run. Oh, sure, you can finagle around with permissions and get many of them to run, but is it really worth the time to work around broken software? (running Windows which itself is broken notwithstanding)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Viruses use security holes to get onto PCs in the first place - once the virus is running on the PC, it's got free reign. There can be absolutely no security vulnerabilities on a system and the virus usually still do what it wants if it's preloaded onto the system.
You don't need administrative privileges to do many things that viruses want to do (eg. send mail, monitor keypresses). They ran the test by loading the virus onto the machine, then letting it execute. That doesn't demonstrate that the system is full of holes - it demonstrates that the system is very good at backwards compatibility!
Let's be clear here (and the same is true for anyone running Linux), you don't know that none of your machines were infected. You know thatyou never discovered an infection.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
As a Windows (and Unix) System Administrator dealing with numerous users of the 'average' type, I must say giving users limited rights only work if the programs they need to run can do so within those rights.
We deal with a lot of industry specific software (ie. badly produced software) and many of the users need to have full access to absolutely everything in order for it to work, including mapped drives to the data!
Some of the users I support are absolutely mind-numbingly stupid. You tell them over and over to NOT do something and they do it again. You try and educate them on attachments and safe web browsing, and they don't care! Many of them will try all the risky things at work that they wouldn't do at home - because they know if they screw up their home computers they'll have to pay to get it fixed. At work, I fix them, someone else pays.
Remote Shell trojan (which despite the name is self replicating and therefore a virus). Designed specifically to be spread by users running trustworthy executables without the need for admin rights. And yes, it did infect a number of systems 'in the wild'
Seriously, this guy is almost pathological in his determination to distribute as much FUD as possible about Windows.
Taco: Fire this retard. The stuff he posts is NOT news for nerds. It is thinly veiled, and ineffective, smear pieces. Real stories about OS problems are interesting. Kdawson's FUD isn't.
When you have little or no say in what software gets selected for use but are required to maintain local support for the same software as well as maintain the security of the network, it is not a waste of time at all. You do not give users Admin privileges. You give them the permissions they require to do their job and no more. That's basic best practice.
It's really not even that difficult to figure out. Nine times out of ten, the program either wants to write to HKLM\Software\$appname or wants to write to two or three configuration or log files in %programfiles%\$appname. About a quarter of the time (IMX) the documentation contains detailed information about what permissions are necessary. After that it's merely a case of using the various SysInternals monitors to figure out what's causing the problem. Between Xcacls and regini it's not difficult at all to script the changes. I typically maintain a single script which checks for the presence of each application and, if found, applies the necessary permissions changes.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Antivirus software vendor has reached the conclusion that you still NEED antivirus software.
Exactly.
From GP:
Well there go the vast majority of Windows viruses, too.
In fact, from the test they did...
- didn't run
Troj-Bredo-M
W32/Autorun-ATK
Troj/Banker-EUT
-- Ran
Troj/FakeAV-AFY
Mal/EncPk-KY
Mal/EncPk-KP
Troj/Agent-LIW
Troj/FakeAV-AFX
Troj/Zbot-JN
W32/Autorun-ATC
So 6/10 were definite Trojans (Troj/). I.e. some piece of software saying it's all sorts of good stuff, but in reality is a virus.
Then there's the Autoruns - last I knew, autorun, even on Vista, by default doesn't open a darn thing. So I guess either they changed Autorun settings, or they simply told Windows to run the program (a virus).
Lastly, the Mal/EncPk ones. They're deemed malware because they're packaging and encryption signatures that often get used by malware authors (even though they have legitimate uses, blabla). What do they envelop?
Mal/EncPk-KY: sadly sophos' site doesn't detail, but other sites will tell you that this, too, is a Trojan with Bredolab blargh.
Mal/EncPk-KP: "About this threat: The Trojan arrives as an attachment in fake e-card messages, with text as follows"
So that's 8/10 trojans, and 2/10 that might as well be classified as such unless I'm wholly mistaken about autorun.
Again GP:
That's the real issue - and one that applies to any operating system.
Not saying Windows isn't less secure.. on the other hand, I don't remember Microsoft suggesting that UAC was a 100% solution against viruses. Just against those that try to do admin-y things when you yourself aren't running as admin. That's usually the thing people point out with Linux "it can't infect the rest of the system". Well that's great - but that won't stop it from, for example, turning your machine into a spam zombie as long as the user is allowed to send e-mail.
This article is not saying Windows 7 is insecure. You couldn't even come to that conclusion if you look at what they did. They ran untrusted code known to contain viruses on a Windows 7 machine. UAC only blocked those that tried to perform administrative tasks, which is what its job is. They did not try to do remote infection.
I could write a virus attached to an executable that deleted your favorites file or all of the documents in your user's document folders. This would still be a nasty virus and would not be classified as an administrative activity, thus not triggering UAC. This would not indicate any flaw in the OS or it's level of security. This is no different from any other platform, running as admin or not, if you run untrusted code, it will be able to do anything your logged in user can do.
The point of the article is that people should not pretend UAC *is* virus protection. Microsoft doesn't market it as virus protection, and people shouldn't be under the impression that UAC prevents viruses from running.
Side thought: Of course, this WAS written by Sophos, an AntiVirus marketer. One could hardly expect them to choose viruses/worms that cast "naked Windows 7" in a good light, now could they?
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
None of the 10 they picked!
Not quite. Microsoft added a cryptographic whitelist of programs that are automatically allowed to elevate. Certain parts of Windows are then allowed to automatically elevate (like file properties dialogs, the control panel, etc...). Since there's no way to distinguish the source of events, NT 6.x also enforces mandatory access controls, and places programs with administrator privileges in a high integrity level, which prevents low integrity processes from interacting with them.
That's why some things still require two steps. The 'first click' causes explorer (or whatever part of Windows you're dealing with) to automatically elevate and switch to a high integrity level. But since that click could have been injected by unprivileged malware, rather than an actual mouse click, the program then requires a 'second click' confirmation. Since it's running at a high integrity level now, that second click can only come from other high privilege programs or drivers. One special case is the UAC settings control panel... that places itself into a high integrity level immediately so that malware can't inject keystrokes to turn off UAC.
The Linux community, as a whole, needs to get it's story straight. (Yeah, I'll probably get modded troll, I'm okay with that).
One day I hear Linux has great hardware support. It's not like Linux in the past, we even have *BETTER* hardware support than Windows now.
Then, the next day I hear, 'Well, yeah, Linux doesn't work; but you don't have the right hardware. You need to BUY A NEW FRIGGIN MACHINE if you want to bank on Linux working without spending hours trying to get it to work.
Which is it? It can't be both.
The funny thing is the article you cite doesn't mention any virus for Linux or OS X that is in the wild. It talks about malware, which it claims is increasing, but does not list any specific item. It doesn't say if any of the malware is a virus or if any of it is propagating in the wild. You've failed in that regard.
You still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7
There's a classic example of abductive reasoning. I do not have to run anti-virus on Windows 7 because I don't, nor do I ever plan to run Windows 7.
And I would be willing to bet the same could be said for Security Essentials.
Been running AVG for years, but ever since I installed SE it's caught shit in video files before they've even finished downloading. As well as a couple JavaScript attacks from websites I wouldn't think twice about visiting. I can't even remember the last threat AVG found aside from cookies.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Windows 7 has a whitelist (based on authenticode signatures) of programs which are allowed to automatically elevate. However, it also has mandatory access controls, which segregates programs into different integrity levels. When UAC elevates a program, it is placed in a high integrity level. Lower integrity levels aren't allowed to inject things like keystrokes into higher integrity levels.
So you are somewhat right, but mostly wrong. Malware could trick a trusted program into bypassing UAC and autoelevating, but after elevation the malware won't be able to interact with the trusted program anymore. And since all the trusted programs require a second user interaction before doing anything after elevation, tricking a part of Windows into auto-elevating doesn't help malware at all.
They got some malware, and ran it. If these malware did not need elevated privileges, they are expected to run. You download a bash script from the net that goes "\rm -rf ~" and then complain that your $home is hosed? I am not sure the test is fair. Did the malware get root privileges? Did they do any damage that simple plain process with user privilege could not do? Unless such things happened, this test amounts to nothing more than testing backward compatibility of some old binaries in new OS. Duh.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I can't, but google can:
[...]
http://images.google.nl/search?q=osx+virus+in+the+wild
I guess you did not bother to actually check the search results, right?
Because I can't find any report about a real virus in the wild.
Oh, by the way, Google says Barack Obama is a Jew:
http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=barrack+obama+jew
(Hint: He's not.)
I thought it was common knowledge that viruses dont need admin to do a large number of things? I could swear this comes up every time arguments about whether linux can get viruses start. Viruses dont need admin to auto run (users can have per-user settings on that), send packets, send email, launch popups, install BHOs, install firefox addons, read files, etc etc etc.
The things "non-admin" stops are the important things, like installing drivers, installing rootkits, installing LSPs, hooking system files, patching system files, etc etc etc. THOSE are all that matters. If you have a computer set up for the family to use with a non admin account (on XP), the point isnt that you think itll prevent them from getting crapware, its that the crapware wont affect other parts of the system (hopefully).
Its also a hell of a lot easier to remove viruses installed with non-admin priveleges-- the difference is night and day. Non admin viruses usually just stick a single entry (maybe 2) in the startup list, and SysInternals Autoruns or HijackThis cleans that in about 15 seconds. Admin-installed viruses tend to take on the order of 15-30 minutes of manual removal, or booting into linux, or running combofix, or some combination of the 3, and if you screw up once and miss a file the whole thing reinstalls.
FWIW Im an IT consultant (part of my job is helpdesk) and I have yet to deal with a nasty virus / rootkit on Vista. XP on the other hand, I've seen viruses that took 45 minutes to remove even with tools like SDFix, the SysInternals suite, and launching ubuntu to manually remove the infected DLLs sorting by date.
Please remember that the vast majority of hardware and peripherals are designed from the ground up to work with Windows and that most computers are sold with Windows preinstalled and preconfigured.
How do you design a piece of hardware "from the ground up" to work with a particular OS ?
On what OS can you run viruses written for that OS, which will not run? RTFA; they ran virus.exe on Windows 7 and were gobsmacked that they ran. This is FUD and/or a slashvertisement for Sophos..
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