[b]Emsisoft elects winners of the 2012 Malwarelympics[/b]
Since July 27th, athletes from all over the world have been competing at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Away from any sporting events, Emsisoft’s analysis team has posed a completely different question: which countries, categories and malware would be the different winners in the Malwarelympics?
Anti-malware companies such as Emsisoft deliver high performance throughout the entire year so that your computer enjoys the best protection possible. However, a large number of PCs are infected with virtual parasites on a daily basis because, unfortunately, IT security is often neglected. We have been evaluating a lot of data in order to find out who achieved gold, silver and bronze in the different malware disciplines.
As of today, we are proud to present the results: find out for yourself in which countries the most infections per PC have been found, which malware is the most widely spread, which botnet takes first place on the podium with around 30 million controlled PCs and much more!
I found an Email in my ‘Junk’ folder from Emisoft today. I felt; really I should unsubscribe from their newsletter. Bit lazy to just label it ‘Junk’. Anyway as I hit Unsubscibe I notice I’m being lead to; “Emsisoft elects winners of the 2012 Malwarelympics.” I peeped at the ‘chart’. That was the reason I was unsubscribing. I felt things had gone way too far to comprehend Emisoft judging anything, and the play on words using “The Olympics”…
If all stopped using Windows and went to Mac, then there would be less reason to target Windows machines, thus malware will be made for Mac. There is no way to escape the circle.
Sorry but I think you’re wrong. The anti-malware war is just like a contest between a sword and a shield. And no matter what shield you use - square, round or oval.
But you have had to be saved by avast! from attacks on your system.
Windows is the main target not just because of sheer numbers of systems but because it is flawed and so easily taken down. If Windows forced users to only run in Limited User mode the vast majority of malware would be dead in the water. Malware propogates because of poor/sloppy user standards, you are more astute and avoid the problems but look at all the extra armour users are having to put on, read the signatures here on this forum and see the ridiculous number of security apps people are using in an attempt to stay safe.
I have had no infections on any system here for years but that is down to forethought and planning and preventing malware sites connecting to my router more than the apps I run on these machines.
Change to Linux and I have zero need for any of these things and there is no disc cleaning,defragging, endless checking ,resetting and improving the system, I just boot up and use my machines for their intended purpose.
The reason Unix,Linux BSD and OSx are not tagetted often is not down to numbers of systems, there are millions of users and servers out there, it is because it is a lot harder to write anything that will propogate on those systems. There is no registry to infect and the systems don’t run in “root” , that is why if you look at the antivirus apps they basically check for Windows infections in email and files so they don’t get passed on. Bottom line is the numbers of machines are there but the payoff for trying to write the malware code is going to be next to zero so the malware writers are going to find other targets.
Generally not the case, I tend to only get alerts when I’m investigating stuff in these forums. If I didn’t do any of that then the alerts would be rarer than rocking horse droppings.
We all know why the *Nix aren’t targeted, it is the same in business (and this is business, it is all about money), do you go after the niche market with less than 1% market share or do you go after the market share leader. But that doesn’t mean we should use a *nix OS, if that doesn’t suit your needs and for the majority of average users not very user friendly.
We are now seeing an increase in malware targeting OSX, to the point that Apple have now had to stop saying that it isn’t vulnerable to malware.
Regardless of what OS you are using, practising safe hex will go a long way to keeping a user safer irrespective of the OS they are using and your choice of OS really has to be on the users needs/experience.
