Worms on the rise according to Microsoft security report
Worms are the quickest growing security problem for Windows PCs this year according to Microsoft. It comes as “drive-by downloads” and adware become less of a problem.
The latest edition of Microsoft’s six-monthly security reports cover the first half of the year. While Trojan viruses remain the biggest problem, worms have staged something of a comeback: after dropping consistently for the past three years, the proportion of security problems involving worms almost doubled to just under 25 percent.
There were drops in adware (viruses which cause unwanted adverts to appear while using the internet) and Trojan downloaders (malicious software which automatically installs itself when users visit an “infected” web page.) It’s important to note these rises and falls are in terms of the proportion of overall problems rather than the raw numbers.
The report compared the various editions of XP and Vista, showing as expected that there’s a consistent pattern: the more recent your edition or service pack was released, the less likely your machine is to be infected. Surprisingly, however, every version other than XP’s original release was more prone to infection this year than the previous six months, with XP Service Pack 2 showing the greatest increase. That could simply be down to so few people still using XP without any service packs that they are likely to be the type of people who spend little time online and run few applications.
There is also a notable disparity between where security threats originate and where they have the most effects. Aside from a very small level in South Africa, virtually no malware distribution sites are based in Africa, but parts of Central Africa have the highest infection rates, along with Turkey. Meanwhile Mongolia appears to be the world’s unlikely leader in malware hosting (and among the most prevalent for phishing sites), yet is one of the safest places to actually use a computer.
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