Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Antivirus software vendor has reached the conclusion that you still NEED antivirus software.
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.)
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..
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);