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Rich Countries Suffer Less Malware, Says Microsoft Study
chicksdaddy writes "To paraphrase a quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald: 'Rich countries aren't like everyone else. They have less malware.' That's the conclusion of a special Security Intelligence Report from Microsoft, anyway. The special supplement, released on Wednesday, investigated the links between rates of computer infections and a range of national characteristics including the relative wealth of a nation, observance of the rule of law and the rate of software piracy. The conclusion: cyber security (by Microsoft's definition: low rates of malware infection) correlated positively with many characteristics of wealthy nations – high Gross Income Per Capita, higher broadband penetration and investment in R&D and high rates of literacy. It correlated negatively with characteristics common in poorer nations – like demographic instability, political instability and lower levels of education.'"
Better literacy leads to a better ability to spot the poorly written bogus come-ons that get you infected when you click on them? I just can't believe it.
Computers at internet cafes in third-world countries look as scary and diseased as truck stop hookers. One imagines that whoever set up the computers way back when might have been tech savvy, but the owner paid him for his one-time services, then for the next 5-10 years kept the machines running with no updates or virus scans. The staff hired to work there are just babysitting the machines to make sure no one steals them; they have no greater knowledge of how to fix a problem than restarting the computer.
I use these establishments only to plug my notebook into a ethernet jack, but a non-insignificant amount of times, to ask to use your own computer instead of their infectious, malware-ridden machines evokes suspicion that are you are some kind of hacker terrorist and they want you to leave.
Now that's a mighty find report.
Care to compare that rate VS Open Source ?
Because my memory says Microsoft cuts off machines that are pirated so if you are unwilling to spend a month of ones cashflow for software just so you can get patches OR one can choose to eat, pay rent or property taxes, or electricity.
This problem lies at the foot of Microsoft and their usary. Unless they can show that it doesn't by comparing Open Source boxes based on things like FreeBSD or any of the various GNU/Linux forkes suffer the same problem, the only logical choice is this report is a failed astroturffing attempt to blame others VS Microsoft policies.
But how can anything that Microsoft says about malware be trusted when Microsoft's own Security Essentials software has problems detecting malware?
The reason is because anti-virus software on these computers is not updated. Reasons for not updating primarily revolve around how expensive it is to connect to the Internet. I don't live in my home country, Zimbabwe. When I did visit the one time I installed Ubuntu on the home PC because half the time the PC was unusable thanks to malware. I blogged about it here http://www.mahalasoft.co.za/blog/ubuntu-linux-experiment . The next time I visited, Windows XP had be reinstalled on the machine because that is what most of the "technies" knew back home, yes the PC was unusable again.
To make sure you're rich.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Countries didn't become rich by accident.
It's a combination of several things, starting with higher IQs and then including things like rule of law, hygiene, political stability and emphasis on learning.
In any part of the world, and in every ethnic group, you will find that some countries have broken away from the others and have generally higher intelligence, thus put a priority on things like stability, rule of law, infrastructure, etc.
It's not an accident they're richer.
In life, all things come down to the choices we make and the abilities we have. It's not arbitrary, no matter how much ./ peanut gallery would like to think it so.
When the dodgy $1 Windows+Office disk comes complete with Malware this is really no surprise. I'm sure the $1 Norton disk also comes with free anti-virus+rootkit.
Jason.
There are many reasons why malware is so rampant in poor countries.
1. If majority of population cannot afford buying software legally, even those who can afford do not buy it, because they see no reason to pay relatively huge money for something that almost everyone gets for free. Piracy creates increases the risk not only because some pirated software may include malware, but automatic update is often disabled to prevent the pirated version being detected by the vendor.
2. Old computers often mean that they cannot run new software, which means a lot of software in use is no longer supported by the vendor, and there is no security updates for it (even if it was bought legally).
3. Sharing a PC among many people is very common. This dramatically increases a chance of some virus being introduced, because it feels like no one responsible. If something bad happened, anyone can claim it is someone else's fault. Thus anyone feels free to do whatever damn thing comes to his or her mind.
4. There is no police to fight cyber crime, so cyber criminals can do whatever they want with virtual immunity. In fact, common attitude is to blame victims (they should not have installed some pirated software, they should not have visited such sites, etc).
5. Most people do not use their computer to store or transmit any private sensible information (such as credit card numbers), so as long as malware does not interfere with their work, they are reluctant to take any action to remove it. Usually they do not have any antivirus software except perhaps a demo, which can only scan but does not remove malware. So they have to pay some money a local "guru" to clean up their computer, but only to find the computer infected again in less than a week later (probably, due to some unpatched software, infected an USB stick, or some other reason).
6. Very low computer literacy means that people have less understanding about how computers work and how to use them safely. So they may download and install programs that make some completely unrealistic promises (such as making your computer or Internet connection twice faster). In general, they have no clue about the source from which they download software.