"AusLogics Disk Defrag wants to install. Allow?"

"Yes."

"ZoneAlarm Free wants to install. Allow?"

"*sigh* Yes."

"AVG Antivirus Free wants to install. Allow?"

"FFS YES."

"Website wants to install R00tm3 ActiveX control. Allow?"

"YES YES YES YES YES STOP ASKING ME!"

Not secure, but certainly deniable.

Wouldn't trust any info from them, never mind trust their products. Complete crap is the nicest description I can come up with

Good job Godwinning the discussion before it even starts.

If you re-read the article and think really hard you might start to understand why the poor buggers who have to admin the crap that Mr.Gates has been shoving down the throat of middle managers for the past decade or so get a bit upset.

Win2k was my favourite, it never mucked about like the others have, xp was alright but vista is just horrible I don't know why i ever bothered installing it, You do a dual boot with xp and all you end up with is an awful awful mess of access rights, great, so straight after a clean install I don't have priviledges to write a file to my own desktop?!? or to change ID3 tags of files in my music folder?!?!? when I only have a single, admin account ?! what a f**king state

Ubuntu is quickly becoming more popular than it was, but I don't think you can say it's becoming more popular than windows, really.

In my house there are 4 windows installations to 3 linux ones, and that's only if you include the wrt54g. I suspect the average business has a higher windows-to-linux ratio than that, and I bet the average house certainly does

Congratulations, you have just been infected with a computer virus.

It's too late to save your data.

Please open a "run..." command window and type, 'format c:/u/s', 'Y'

Thank you.

"Ubuntu is quickly becoming more popular than it was, but I don't think you can say it's becoming more popular than windows, really"

I never said that! (Though Ubunutu is my preferred 'flavour' of Linux)

"It's worth bearing in mind that PCs infected with malware are likely to harbour multiple infections, so PC Tools' stats don't shed much light on the percentage of infected machines."

So either some PCs are more likely to have malware than others, or malware now comes in bundles? If you mean to imply the former, then it presumably follows that there is no reason that any differences in infection rates over the different OSs couldn't be down to demographics?

I should probably fess up as a Windows 2000er, but that's only because I switched to Mac quite a few years ago and 2000 is the most recent copy I have, hence the only one I've bothered to install as a VM. I don't use it very often. To be honest, I'm more concerned about some of the third-party tools that come with OS X (Perl, PHP, etc) and even then the firewall in my router makes me feel secure.

How many of those Win2000 systems were servers? I find it difficult to believe that servers are infected with malware, unless you consider "malware files stored on servers" as infections. And if you do that, you can even claim that Samba servers are infected with Windows-based malware and viruses.

I haven't used Vista much. It came on my notebook and I replaced it with XP. I didn't like how it was so slow, I didn't like the look and feel, and I didn't like that most software (at least when I purchased it) had problems with it. I also didn't like how the Automatic Updates did not give any meaningful progress indicator. However, as much as I dislike Vista, I do so, and will continue to do so, on the merits. I will not bash Vista because of people's stupidity.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- a computer cannot protect people from themselves. In the end, it is the user who instructs the computer what to do. As an anecdote, I had a client a number of years ago (2001 or 2002, I think) who had infected her computer with a virus, and I was called out to remove it. She had antivirus software on her computer, and it was an older virus, so I didn't understand how she got infected. When I asked what happened, she said she received an email and the antivirus software warned her that the email attachment was infected, but she selected to ignore it and run the attachment anyway. When I asked her why she ran a file she knew was infected, her answer was "Well, I had to see what it was".

If you build a foolproof system, they will build a better fool. When you have users who click "OK" and "Yes" buttons without even reading the messages they are responding to, you cannot blame the OS. There are those of you who will say you can blame Microsoft because you feel they conditioned people to click on things, but in the end, it's the users performing the actions. As such, it is the users' fault for not reading what they are responding to. This goes for pop-up windows as well as license agreements and contracts.

“Also, IT pros run server 2k8 as a desktop OS.”

2k8 = 2800…

67.8% of tests prove this conclusively. The remaining 52.95% prove the opposite is false.

-dZ.

Seems as though I remember plugging a fully patched 2k box into the Internet with no firewall and having it owned within 20 seconds. Then again that was a while ago, but they haven't released any new service since then. XP stays connected to the internet with minimal firewalling and no magic infections. Until the users click those damned links in spam...

Might it be because Vista is still far less used, as no one wants it?

give it a couple of month, and I bet there will be 37 % MORE malware on Vista machines Than on XP ones.

The number of unique malware per 1000 machines is relevant here, the keyword being "unique". Stop trying to look stupid.

Also, the fact that tech-savvy users don't want to be anywhere near a Vista machine whereas Joe Bloggs will take whatever PC Worlds sells might bias the numbers. But isn't that very fact a clue about the crappiness of Vista, in the first place?

Vista is malware. It collects user data then sends it off to people you don't know for them to do what they want with it. MS did say it does that...

A quick search turned up the original (?) article on InformationWeek. Can't find anything in PC Tools' press releases.

I agree with some other's comments here - while the report is interesting there is more information wanted, and a better breakdown of threats/OS. I see the correct figure for Windows 2003 is 478:1000.

I also see that Threatfire is 32 bit only, which will definitely skew the figures for Win2003, & possibly Vista too. I'd like to know if there was a noticeable difference between XP Home & XP Pro? And likewise, do the report rates vary across the different flavours of Vista? My first instinct is to say that the home systems would have significantly higher rates than business ones. This would support the infection through ignorance thesis. If the levels are substantially the same that would put things in the favour of the 'Vista is pants' camp.

Maybe one of the Reg writers could see if they can turn up that information for us as a follow up?

You see, it occurs to me that the figures are roughly what I'd expect, given the sort of user of the respective operating systems and the age of the systems.

Think about it. Who's likely to be running 2k these days? 2003 Server? Probably people who have a clue...

Both have low vulnerability ratings... Could it possibly be that the users have set them up rather better than the XP/Vista users? Despite the fact that a 2k system has almost certainly been around longer than any of the others. And 2003 isn't exactly new, is it?

As for the Vista/XP difference. Could it possibly be that copies of XP will tend to have been running longer, with less than savvy users? Accumulating more vulnerabilities? I'm not popping at XP YOU, as an XP user either - I'm one too - but just look at the competence of your average XP user!

And copies of Vista simply not having been around as long, regardless of the competence of their users, simply not been running long enough to accumulate vulnerabilities?

And how about the vulnerabilities as a fresh install with default settings?

Or the level of security patch application?

OK, let's do a 'survey'. Comparing Apricots, Sardines, Fish fingers and Belt buckles... Comparing them measuring the same parameters. Taking no account of their use, age.... Um, get the idea?

99% of statistics a useless. 98% of statistics might as well be made up. The other 1% are lies.

"How much command line utilities does Windoze give you when you do have major issues ? ... Can you goto CLI mode and do a recovery of GUI in windows without having to fiddle with it ? or even change your windows manager for kde to gnome or whatever ? ... Can you actually debug and fix install anything useful from CLI ? ... When the jerks sitting behind the keyboard click yes and yes and more yes do they get prompted for a root password ? ... Can they get as part of the OS tools FREE tools provided by OS to find cure issues caused by a badly written OS ? ... the answer is NO so back to the jerks who design this shite.. and the jerks who support it like YOU keep jerking behind windows dude you will get to see the light one day and it wont BE MS lol"

Sadly, it is this type of person who has the loudest voice in the FOSS world. And let's be honest, when you hear/read something like this, what's your first reaction? Mine is to walk away. This is the kind of attitude that will keep the average person (and many businesses) away from FOSS. Mindless, foaming-at-the-mouth babbling like the above does nothing to help your cause. If you really want people to understand that your choice of OS is better than Windows (whatever your choice is), then be polite and give clear, concise information and reasons why you think that way. Then again, from my experience, the type of person who writes such drivel as the above, and constantly bashes people for using Windows, is the same person who says they don't want the average person using their choice of OS (obviously because they somehow feel superior or "leet"). In the past, I've defended the IT workers and have said the stereotype is wrong. Perhaps the stereotype is more correct than I thought, and I'm just different.

"the user who instructs the computer what to do"

ok, so how do I conclusively prove that I haven't done something stupid and that my machine is owned by me.

absent of proof, I think I'll keep away from the totally secure on line banking experience.

good god man, you run a server with a head on it???? IT pro ???

Users are the main security issue and this PC Tools (never heard of them) is desperate for some business.

If a computer is going to be usable, then the operating system must allow the installation of OS patches and applications. That's the problem right there, and it means that it is impossible to fully secure an OS. There has to be SOME mechanism to allow users to install software, and that mechanism will equally well let them install malware.

If non-technical users are to use a computer, the mechanism to allow the installation of OS patches and applications must be easy to use and as unobtrusive as possible. Ergo, the installation of malware is also made very easy.

The problem isn't the OS - it's the users. Letting non-tech users use computers is a bad idea for security. Unfortunately, it's also the only way that we can afford to have home computers in the first place... Without the non-tech users there wouldn't be the mass market driving down the unit cost.

Ubuntu could suffer just as much - if it ever reaches an installed user base large enough to be worth the attention of malware writers. Windows may have a special problem in that the line between OS and Application is more blurred than it is in Linux, but exactly the same logic applies to both: If you have to let a non-technical user install software or patches then you've immediately allowed a route in for malware.

The only solution is to start selling computers as "appliances" with no user-modifiable parts or software. It's a radical departure from what tech users think of as being a general-purpose computer, but I bet it's what 95%+ of users think of the wee box sitting in the corner of their room.

The number of infection per OS seem to be directly related to the number of people actually using the OS.

1. Of course Windows XP will have the most

2. Of Course Win2k/2003 will have the less, because there is a lot less in use

3, Of Course There is almost none for Linux/MacOS (very fews peoples are using them)

4. Of course most attack rely on user action and since now these day everyone have a computer and 90% of know as much about computer then they used to know how to program a VCR.