Microsoft gets a clue

[unixronin]

More than 60 percent of Windows PCs scanned by Microsoft's Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool between January 2005 and March 2006 were found to run malicious bot software, according to Microsoft.  The tool removed at least one version of the remote control software from about 3.5 million PCs, the software maker said.

"Backdoor Trojans…are a significant and tangible threat to Windows users," Microsoft said in the report.

No shit, Microsoft?  The rest of us have been saying this for HOW long now?

Here's another interesting quote from the same article:

"The Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool found a rootkit on 14 percent of the 5.7 million PCs it removed malicious software from.  This figure drops to 9 percent when excluding the Sony rootkit."

Let's reword that for a different perspective on it:  "Between January 2005 and March 2006, Sony was responsible for one third of all rootkits detected by Microsoft's malware scanner."  In other words, Sony probably r00t3d more boxes than any other single source of malware, and didn't think it was doing anything wrong by doing so.  (After all, they had a sound business case for it, with, like, memos, and even meetings.)

Maybe now that Microsoft has officially come out and said that trojans and rootkits are a problem, we'll see some changes to actually make Windows more resistant to them.  Of course, there's very little defence against the luser who reflexively clicks on anything labelled "H0T W3BC4M BABES 4 U NOW!!!" without even stopping to wonder why the file type is .exe instead of .jpg or .avi, short of just not allowing them privileged accounts.  But that's a little difficult when it's their own home computers.

(Of course, it'd help if Windows and Internet Explorer didn't make it so easy for malware pushers to hide the actual type of a file from the user.  Say, for instance, if Windows didn't DEFAULT to automatically hiding extensions for all registered file types.)

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

And how many root kits will the Micro$oft WGA program install?

Micro$oft CANNOT fix the problem. Period. To do so would break backward compatibility from the DOS days of WinME and earlier. Do you have any idea how many GAMES that will break? If M$ breaks backward compatibility when there are viable choices available, users will choose those alternatives. When that happens, M$ will no longer be able to dictate standards and changes. They lose their market lock. At that point, they will need to survive on business execution and product viability. If you were Micro$oft, would you want to rely on that?