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Windows 8 Defeats 85% of Malware Detected In the Past 6 Months
An anonymous reader writes "Now that Windows 8 is on sale and has already been purchased by millions, expect very close scrutiny of Microsoft's latest and greatest security features. 0-day vulnerabilities are already being claimed, but what about the malware that's already out there? When tested against the top threats, Windows 8 is immune to 85 percent of them, and gets infected by 15 percent, according to tests run by BitDefender."
The reason being it is an AV maker releasing it. They have reason to want to say "Oh the built in AV scanner sucks, you should buy ours!" They may be stacking the results.
AV Comparatives puts MS Security Essentials at about 95% in their latest test, not 85%. Bitdefender is 99.2%.
However one reason for that is false positive rate. MS is willing to trade off some detection to keep it low, because users get pissed off and want to get rid of scanners with lots of false positives. MSE had 0 false positives, BitDefender had 10.
None of this is to say getting a better virus scanner isn't a good idea, just take anything from a company selling a product in an area with a grain of salt. AV Comparatives seems to indicate that wile MSE is certainly not one of the best virus scanners, it isn't bad.
Linux is not 100% secure. Linux is very secure, and is certainly more secure than Microsoft's OSes, but vulnerabilities are discovered all of the time. The biggest distinction is that since Linux is openly developed with the potential for anyone to contribute and for everyone to see, there aren't large, untested milestone releases without public eyes on them like commercial OSes. By the time that the experimental version becomes the release version it's already been vetted. Microsoft doesn't have the same quantity of testing because while there is a beta program, it's not designed to be thoroughly examined.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Actually, when it comes to out-of-the-box security as well as the possibilities offered to knowledgeable admins, Linux isn't really far away from Windows. Both have, from the point of view of a security expert, horrible out-of-the-box security and can be sealed tightly by the hands of good admins.
The main reason why there is less malware for Linux is simply that malware is a business: It's the same reason why there is also less other commercial software for Linux.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That is exactly what the story is about, they rolled that right into the OS this time (technically, into Windows Defender, which is enabled by default).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
More devices run Linux than Windows. How big of a target do you need?
Ah yes. But which Linux? There is, what, 20+ major distributions and dozens or hundreds of minor ones? Even calling all of them a single OS is almost a stretch, given that some of them have almost nothing in common with each other. That's not one target, it's a few dozen. And it's hacked all the time, just rarely using automated malware tools (because, again, those aren't terribly effective against heavily fragmented targets).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
It's not due to "WSE". Windows 8 is highly incompatible with previous versions (google for all the stuff that wont run under W8 anymore).
In most cases the fixes required are very simple and I'm sure malware developers will be catching up fast.
Any software relying on kernel level integration that changed won't work.. IIRC this includes some of the network stack this time around, as well as some of the filesystem interfaces. There's very little that won't work... the less advanced the software the more likely it works from all the way back in early win32 days (3.x) ... that said, a lot of that old software needs to install in an unprotected directory to work, not program files.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info