Microsoft: One In 14 Downloads Is Malicious

alphadogg writes "About one out of every 14 programs downloaded by Windows users turns out to be malicious, Microsoft said Tuesday. And even though Microsoft has a feature in its Internet Explorer browser designed to steer users away from unknown and potentially untrustworthy software, about 5% of users ignore the warnings and download malicious Trojan horse programs anyway. IE also warns users when they're being tricked into visiting malicious websites, another way that social-engineering hackers can infect computer users. In the past two years, IE's SmartScreen has blocked more than 1.5 billion Web and download attacks, according to Jeb Haber, program manager lead for SmartScreen."

Comments

Re:Here is the list of top 5 malicious Downloads.

[DrScotsman]

The grandparent was listing jokes, not actual malicious software.

Of course I jest, but which other Windows program anywhere near as popular brings up UAC prompts out of nowhere in the way Java updater does without even being "opened"? I bet Java is partially to blame for a huge number of users blindly clicking "Yes" to all UAC prompts - in the average user's eyes it just won't stop prompting until you accept its damn update.

Re:"Malicious"

[Tanktalus]

This is what I call the second Microsoft Tax. The first one is the extra ~$30-$60 you pay on your computer that goes to Microsoft for their OS (prices assume it's a new rig with the OEM version pre-installed). The second one, this one, is the extra money you spend on CPU cycles and RAM to run the anti-malware software so that you still have as much CPU power/RAM as you need for what you really bought the computer for.