Windows XP PCs Breed Rootkit Infections 245
CWmike writes "Machines running the decade-old Windows XP make up a huge reservoir of infected PCs that can spread malware to other systems, a Czech antivirus company said. Windows XP computers are infected with rootkits out of proportion to the operating system's market share, according to data released Thursday by Avast Software, which surveyed more than 600,000 Windows PCs. While XP now accounts for about 58% of all Windows systems in use, 74% of the rootkit infections found by Avast were on XP machines. Avast attributed the infection disparity between XP and Windows 7 to a pair of factors: The widespread use of pirated copies of the former and the latter's better security. Vlcek assumed that many of the people running XP SP2, which Microsoft stopped supporting with security patches a year ago, have declined to update to the still-supported SP3 because they are running counterfeits."
water still wet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately the effect is that it impacts others, these are the machines which get used as zombies for spamming, ddos attacks etc.
pirates can get security updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pirates can get security updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Or reinstall... (Score:3, Insightful)
The claims above are likely more due to the length of time of the install than anything to do with the OS itself. I've had my current install of windows for like four years. Nobody with Windows 7 can say that about their OS. And a lot of times spyware ridden machines just stay that way. I demand they look at the data from "time since install" and tell me that that isn't just directly correlated and explains away most of the XP dataset.
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't sure if this should be modded flamebait, since there doesn't seem to be an 'astroturf' rating. *Any* version of windows should not be on the internet without a separate firewall solution deployed. Period.
This just feels too much like a marketing FUD to make people buy more Microsft licenses.
- Dan.