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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."
More like Linux still doesn't have the market share to warrent spending significant time developing malware for it.
Reacting is always easy, that's why malware is so efficient. There are AV kits out there that detect 98+ percent of the current malware. Problem is not the malware we know about already, the problem is new malware that infects before patches can be applied and AV signatures can be updated.
OF COURSE a new system is more resilient against current malware. By the very nature that a lot of exploits simply don't work anymore because, well, different codebase, different handling of various things malware relies on. By that logic, MacOS is even superior to Win8 because because zero malware for Win7 can infect MacOS.
The more interesting question is why 15% (one in seven) malware threats still work on Win8.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Run those same tests/malware against Linux/Mac. 0% gets through.
really? do you think that malware written to take advantage of exploits in the windows OS won't work on linux? thanks for that revelation. linux wins again.
How does an updated version Windows 7 with Microsoft Security Essentials compare? That information might make this article meaningful.
More like Linux still doesn't have the market share to warrent spending significant time developing malware for it.
Neither does Windows 8.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
More devices run Linux than Windows. How big of a target do you need?
Bitdefender sells security products. Can we get a number from somebody a little less biased, or perhaps somebody biased against microsoft? How about a consulting firm with a good reputation the prefers Linux, but grudgingly supports MS because they have to? Anyway, Bitdefender has an incentive for you to think Win8 is insecure. How are they defining malware? Stuff that says, "to install, please enter admin password"? If 15% of the "malware" comes with those instructions, it'll infect anything.
Right...
Linux runs on more computers than Windows worldwide.
You know, all those servers, phones, appliances and clouds that make up the Internet? Those.
It may not be on most desktops but its on everything else and it far outnumbers Windows.
It's not more secure because it's more obscure, it's more secure because it's better.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
The overwhelming number of Linux servers worldwide are behind firewalls and will rarely ever attempt to reach out blindly to the internet. There aren't nearly as many attack vectors to exploit. It's far easier to find some bad PHP code to exploit, or an unpatched version of Apache than it is to attack it using traditional methods that might work on a user machine.
The best antivirus is a smart user.
Most malware on Windows gets dumped into %APPDATA% because it can't go anywhere else without raising a red flag. This makes it fairly easy to nuke. The same works for Linux.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which OS will have an order or magnitude more market share than the other in 6-12 months...
It's not more secure because it's more obscure, it's more secure because it's better.
Yes and no. What versions of Linux are those machines running? What versions of Apache, MySQL, PHP are they running? Very few Linux installs have common attack vectors.
- The vast majority of common attack vectors on Windows require user interaction. The vast majority of your Linux installs have no users.
- The next big group of common attack vectors on Windows require popular end user software (Acrobat, flash, IE, etc). The vast majority of Linux installs don't have those.
There are many documented cases of attacks on Apache, but again there are many different versions of Apache in common use, and MANY of your Linux installs lack Apache anyway.
Linux benefits greatly from obscurity since there's no extremely popular attack vectors that can be leveraged on an insanely large number of systems, and in those cases where such vectors exist they are often exploited.
I don't know if you've heard, but Linux/Android PC's are moving 1.5 million units per day, with a half-billion unit installed base.
Exactly!
That totally debunks the market share argument since Android has not seen a malware explosion, even with it's huge market share.
Oh wait...
That's why Google has stated that Android does not need any malware scanner like Windows Defender
Oh, wait...
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