Does Win7 come with a JRE by default?

You have to have something to run the jar file.

@James 12

But not more infections than Windows infections. I'm assuming OSX Other includes Snow Leopard - the latest 10.6 version. The versions shown are the previous two releases (much like XP and Vista).

Sadly inevitable.

Consider how many Windows versus Macs there are out there. This was always likely to be the case.

The massive XP figures shouldn't be a surprise either.

It's a ten year old OS that didn't have great security to begin with. Combine this with a massive footprint of home and small businesses who buy a PC and allow their free 3 months Mcaffee etc expire and think they're safe.

Worryingly, a similar lax attitude to AV is very common amongst Mac users too. As virii on Mac get more common, many of the mac community really need to grow a little healthy cynicism.

RE: The fanbois don't need this sort of stirring-up first thing in the morning!

"After all the bluster about cross-platform infection, where's Linux in this little chart?"

From the article...

They didn't show any infections on Linux machines. Turner said that Jnanabot attacks on the open source platform weren't able to survive a reboot.

But...

All the Linux fanbois I know continually bang on about never needing to reboot their Linux boxes, to the extent that most of them go out of their way to avoid doing so out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

I'd say that makes the Linux infections a little more relevant.

As a Linux user...

"All the Linux fanbois I know continually bang on about never needing to reboot their Linux boxes, to the extent that most of them go out of their way to avoid doing so out of sheer bloody-mindedness."

We use Linux on the majority of our machines here, but we still turn them off when we go home at night. We're not thick - electricity costs money, and business like money.

"I'd say that makes the Linux infections a little more relevant."

And yet again you miss the point that they were unable to find any. Maybe Linux users were savvy enough not to get infected, maybe a reboot got rid of it, but either way there were no infections to display, so they can't display them.

We don't get bit because...

Linux users don't get bit because we're not stupid enough to believe a "You must install this codec" message given to us by the web browser, nor click through the untrusted cert warnings that come after it.

Probably...

MCE and shiz, just a guess, looking at the numbers. That and the Oyster Card top up jobs they have on the DLR. Way too easy to play with the OS on those.

Err...

XPe isn't used on ATMs, not proper ones owned by banks, at least. Bank ATMs use XP pro or are starting to use Vista.

@AC

"Bank ATMs use NT4 or are starting to use Windows 2000."

There, fixed it for you...

<eg>

yeah

cos i alway check my facebook on my ATM

@Steve Foster

Ok, I'll rephrase that: The bank I work for, who has one of the largest ATM networks in Europe, no longer use NT4 or W2K, instead they use XP pro and starting to move onto Vista.

I'm not aware that any bank runs key, customer facing, systems on NT4 - MS won't even let you pay for support any more.

@YARR

Easy - they're stupid. No quibbling, banking corporations are thick as custard. You only have to look around the world today to see just how stupid banks can be.

Re: Bullplop?

>and I think that everybody would be surprised

>if Jnanabot was able to permanently install itself

>on a Linux machine via an ordinary user account.

You're assuming said user doesn't log on again after a reboot - nothing would stop malware from adding itself to the user account. It's what all the cool kids are doing to avoid UAC on Windows now anyway.

...and more

There are many more places than just the .bashrc (assuming you're using bash, of course, I prefer the AT&T software toolbox ksh myself). Both KDE and Gnome (and most other X11 Window mangers as well) have user startup directories and rc files to allow attacks on systems accessed with a GUI, and you would, of course, have the normal PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH attack vectors that could be used to subvert commands that people use all the time, and there are many more.

Linux is not immune from attack, it's just that an attack needs to do more things to really pwn it . For instance, if a user has iptables configured to control inbound and outbound traffic on a Linux system (assuming that the user does not run everything as root), you would have to engage in tricking the user to sudo a command, or otherwise obtain escalated privileges to alter the configuration or turn it off, unlike most windows systems.

There is no such thing as a totally secure OS, it's just more difficult to mess with Linux.

The OSX statistics in the article are a surprise, however.

re: The OSX statistics in the article are a surprise, however.

I guess it's a more homogeneous ecosystem than linux

What's Safari

I have a Mac and I never use it.

@xxlyyk

Possibly. I don't think we can project too much from the original stats other than we should suggest that home users consider updating to newer versions of their operating systems (or new machines for Windows XP Home users).

If we look at market share by OS type/version:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10

The numbers for Windows Vista and 7 show a 9% Infection rate for 33% distribution (good @ ~1/3 of expected infection) XP has 75% infection for 57% distribution (~1.3 times infection rate).

"OS X Other" (Presumably OS 10.6 plus all previous versions of OS X other than 10.58 and 10.11.4) has 3% for Infection for 3% distribution (corresponding infection?). OS 10.5.6 has 9% Infection for 1.5% distribution rate (6 times infection rate) - OS 10.4.11 has 4% infection for 0.4% distribution rate (10 times infection rate).

What I do find surprising is the numer of XP Professional infections. Generally, we could think that XP Professional is managed by "professionals" whilst the perception is that OS X is often managed by "users". If the Windows XP "professionals" were doing their job properly, the rate of infection should be lower.

If we believe Symantec (and I personally haven't used any of their products for the last 6 years), the original Windows versions of the Trojan.Jnanabot infection had 0-49 infections on October 26, 2010. The article says that the number of infections is now "in the thousands" (maybe 10,000?) so we are looking at maybe a few hundred Windows 7/Vista infections with a few more hundred OS X infections of which the substantial majority are on old systems.

I help run (as a volunteer) classes for retirees. We use Windows XP, Vista & 7, OS X and Linux. We get pupils to set up separate 'admin' accounts and 'user' accounts for their systems. The advice that we give is "Only use the 'user' account for normal tasks - If you get a message asking you to install something, be suspicious."

I note that the MacBook Air no longer ships with Java and that it now can be downloaded from Oracle - I, like you, try to avoid Java on client machines.

So in conclusion: Unless we know the breakdown of "OS X Other", I might suspect that Symantec are trying to whip up interest in their Apple producs to a growing Apple "Home User" market as their Windows Home market share is threatened by the free Microsoft Securty Essentials product.

Use Sophos

It's far better. Symantec, I wouldn't have any of their worthless pile of [insert expletive of choice here] anywhere near my dog, let alone on any computer of mine.