Microsoft on viruses and malware: It's not our fault, guv.
Turns out that the vast majority of virus attacks are against badly-written third-party software, rather than Windows itself. So claims Microsoft, anyway, in the graph to the right. In XP, 58% of attacks target third party software, and in Vista, 94% target third-parties. The most popular targets are Apple’s Quicktime, Realplayer and Winzip.
When you drill down to the top ten browser vulnerabilities, Microsoft admit that they account for half of the biggest flaws on XP, including by far the top one, but on Vista, they don’t feature in the top ten at all – the number one place goes to a bit of software called Baofeng, which I suspect is a toolbar of some sort.
Oh, and while we’re at it, here are a few more random factoids:
– More than 60% of computers cleaned in Brazil had password stealers on them
– China is under siege by a wave of pop-up ad toolbars and browser addons
– Viruses are very popular in Korea, particularly in the peer-to-peer networks, and the gaming community
– Vista infection rates are lower than XP for any service pack combo you choose. 64-bit infection rates are lower than 32-bit ones. I’m glad I’m running Vista 64 at home.
(via ZDNet)
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