Rich Countries Suffer Less Malware, Says Microsoft Study 84
chicksdaddy writes "To paraphrase a quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald: 'Rich countries aren't like everyone else. They have less malware.' That's the conclusion of a special Security Intelligence Report from Microsoft, anyway. The special supplement, released on Wednesday, investigated the links between rates of computer infections and a range of national characteristics including the relative wealth of a nation, observance of the rule of law and the rate of software piracy. The conclusion: cyber security (by Microsoft's definition: low rates of malware infection) correlated positively with many characteristics of wealthy nations – high Gross Income Per Capita, higher broadband penetration and investment in R&D and high rates of literacy. It correlated negatively with characteristics common in poorer nations – like demographic instability, political instability and lower levels of education.'"
You don't say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better literacy leads to a better ability to spot the poorly written bogus come-ons that get you infected when you click on them? I just can't believe it.
Re:You don't say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not from what I've seen...
Having a techie friend call to fix it when it's broke is what gets most people out of the jam.
Though with my friends, I charge $60/hr to friends to fix their computers on the side. As a consequence I do maybe two side jobs a year. I don't want to do side work, and when they know that it'll cost probably $120 to get their $500 computer fixed, they do tend to be at least a little more careful.
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Not from what I've seen... Having a techie friend call to fix it when it's broke is what gets most people out of the jam. Though with my friends, I charge $60/hr to friends to fix their computers on the side. As a consequence I do maybe two side jobs a year. I don't want to do side work, and when they know that it'll cost probably $120 to get their $500 computer fixed, they do tend to be at least a little more careful.
Amen brotha.
No one expects a mechanic to fix your engine for free. No one expects a lawyer to draw up a contract for you for free. No one expects a doctor to fix a broken leg for free.
For some reason people think that the guy who spent hundreds of hours of his time mastering this skillset should fix their computers for free. They often act hurt and offended when you decline! I don't understand why people think the principles applying to all those other skillsets magically don't apply to this one.
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I wouldn't expect my brother to charge me $60 per hour to fix a fucking computer either.
There's a difference between acting as free labor and acting as an entitled asshole. People will literally work 3 hours free of charge to help you move houses, but they get pissy if you expect the same in return for computer work.
In a professional capacity, I can easily charge twice what he charges and still get business, doesn't mean I will charge above $20/hr to friends.
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Maybe not for the first few times, but after a while it just gets freaking old. That's when an hourly rate starts to sound appealing to me. Even family members need to learn and stop making the same stupid mistakes over and over.
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Exactly. After years of dealing with the same old shit from almost everyone you know, it really does start to get old. It starts to feel as if everyone just uses you as a cushion to catch them when they fall, and never make any attempt to learn a damn thing about what they're doing that they shouldn't be doing themselves to prevent it from happening in the future...
Very few people actually listen and try to understand what I have to say. Those that do and actually follow my suggestions, I rarely ever hea
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+5, Beyond Insightful! Well said AC. I never have mod points when I need them.
I've personally given up on helping people with their computers for the most part, because in the end they usually seem to be ungrateful assholes who just want to get out of paying some "real" computer repair shop $70 just to fucking look at the damn thing, and who knows what else on tap of that! A shop in a nearby city I noticed advertises that it will remove viruses (that's it!) for a whopping $90. I'm done being walked all
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What about family members?
Re:You don't say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mine have been forcefully switched to Linux. Much easier to support since I've set up ssh reverse tunnel with port forwarding for vnc. So if a PC is online, I can fix it. If not -- there's a custom LiveCD which does the same trick with reverse ssh.
Oh, and no problems with malware whatsoever.
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A few years ago I set up my parents with Ubuntu LTS, since they wanted something that worked and I didn't want to update it every 6 months. Everything was working fine, until my sister's dickhead boyfriend "upgraded" it to the latest version and messed everything up. From then on, when my parents had trouble I referred them back to dickhead boyfriend, since he evidently volunteered to maintain their OS from then on. Once it involved responsibility he wouldn't do shit, and I wasn't inclined to clean up his m
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An operating system is not a panacea. What I have done with my family, instead of ramming something down their throat that is likely above their abilities, is to teach them good basic security practices, and that bad things can happen if you are no
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My sister has an icon on her desktop that says "Connect to Steve at home" and one that says "Connect to Steve at work." She calls me up, I set up the VNC client in listen mode, and she clicks the icon.
I then have access to her machine. All the command line stuff is done in a script attached to that icon. She doesn't have to deal with it. It's not that hard.
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Now read the rest of my post. Forcing someone to use {Product X} isn't the answer to security.
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Maybe. Maybe not. But it is certainly the answer to support. I can support this. When she was using Windows, her "local" support was Best Buy, and they charged her a ton of money without solving the problems. I'm not local (she's 1100 miles away), and my ability to help over the phone was limited, especially since the last version of Windows I used with any regularity was NT4.
If she gets an iPad, she's on her own. I have no expertise with that.
What if the program isn't there or is broken? What if my
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And when she buys an iPad, how are you going to duplicate that setup?
Is it really so hard for you to accept that this family found a solution that works for them?
I mean, if he claimed that everyone on the planet should use Linux or else they're less than human, then I could understand your incessent urge to find some flaw or disaster-waiting-to-happen in "steveg's" setup. But he made no such claim (nor did he claim that Linux is completely invulnerable to security issues). He merely described what worked for his family.
What part of that bothers you?
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That may be part of the issue.
However there is the other issue of being able to afford a better infrastructure.
Even a basic Home network in America has the following.
A broadband modem That connects to a Router for their Wireless, This router does basic hardware firewall and acts like a switch between mutable PC's, and even old Wireless systems offer modest encryption. Just by being able to Drop a hundred bucks in equipment we have basic safety. If you are in poor country and don't have a few hundred bucks
phishing would screw up their "security" metric... (Score:2)
tl;dr but malware level can only be one metric and is an incomplete definition of security.
You would expect to find people suffering damaging attacks to their livelihood and important data to be found at a computer with high "security".
But I bet suffering spam and phishing target rich people which should screw up their metric.
That, and dividing the world into territories when it should probably be divided into something else like government, military, private computers, mobile, multinationals, kids, etc.
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That, and dividing the world into territories when it should probably be divided into something else like government, military, private computers, mobile, multinationals, kids, etc.
I'm intrigued, how exactly does one go about dividing the world into mobile?
Multiple factors (Score:1)
Using older software (older versions of windows that is) and not having access to a "computer guy" in your family, combined with not being able to just "buy a new computer because the old one is broken" or even using official support would lead to simply not being able to deal with malware.
Windows XP (Score:2)
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I'm not so sure about that. It's not exactly hard to get a pirate copy of Windows 7 in China. Not sure about Vista or 8 though, but I'd be surprised if they were at all hard to get.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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I use these establishments only to plug my notebook into a ethernet jack, but a non-insignificant amount of times, to ask to use your own computer instead of their infectious, malware-ridden machines evokes suspicion that are you are some kind of hacker terrorist and they want you to leave.
Extending and embracing your analogy, it's like bringing your own hooker to a truckstop and they want you to leave because they think you're a pimp.
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Extending and embracing your analogy, it's like bringing your own hooker to a truckstop and they want you to leave because they think you're a pimp.
I don't think GP would appreciate you calling his metaphorical wife/girlfriend a hooker.
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Bring your own notebook doesn't protect you from pharming and other MITM attacks.
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Bring your own notebook doesn't protect you from pharming and other MITM attacks.
It does if you only use SSL-enabled web sites.
For gmail users, I believe Chrome (and ChromeOS) now come configured by default to check not just the certificate chain, but even to know which specific certificate to expect. So a compromised CA plus compromised DNS just results in a denial of service. You can also manually check the certificates for other sites you go to (get their fingerprints and write them down when you're at a trustworthy connection).
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Firefox has Certificate Patrol. Helped me catch multiple MITM at cafes.
Excellent. I didn't mean to imply that only Chrome does such things. I would hope that all browsers do.
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That's what SSH tunneling is for. Just connect to Wifi, set up an SSH tunnel, and forward all traffic through it. It's just like browsing at home.
*hand on their head* - *pat* *pat* (Score:2, Insightful)
Now that's a mighty find report.
Care to compare that rate VS Open Source ?
Because my memory says Microsoft cuts off machines that are pirated so if you are unwilling to spend a month of ones cashflow for software just so you can get patches OR one can choose to eat, pay rent or property taxes, or electricity.
This problem lies at the foot of Microsoft and their usary. Unless they can show that it doesn't by comparing Open Source boxes based on things like FreeBSD or any of the various GNU/Linux forkes suff
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"the average piracy rate of countries in the low-CCM cluster was drastically lower than the other clusters. The implications of this observation are complex. Countries that do a better job managing cybersecurity may also do a better job mitigating piracy, or countries with higher piracy rates may have a more difficult time containing malware and other cyber threats."
The purpose of the paper is to influence specific policy decisions, so apparently they can't see the obvious conclusion, that pirated software often comes with malware.
Can Microsoft detect malware? (Score:5, Insightful)
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> But how can anything that Microsoft says about malware be trusted when Microsoft's own windows OS can be classified as spyware/rootkit approved by clicking through a multipage EULA?
FTFY
Poverty produces piracy, that brings malware. (Score:1)
In poor countries the salaries are so low that people can not afford all the software they want. When you make 6000 US$ a year and only one of the application you need costs 2000 US$ , you resort to piracy. There are many cracked applications available in the WEB and most of them insert backdoor traps, trojans and worms.
Anti-virus software not updated (Score:4, Informative)
The reason is because anti-virus software on these computers is not updated. Reasons for not updating primarily revolve around how expensive it is to connect to the Internet. I don't live in my home country, Zimbabwe. When I did visit the one time I installed Ubuntu on the home PC because half the time the PC was unusable thanks to malware. I blogged about it here http://www.mahalasoft.co.za/blog/ubuntu-linux-experiment [mahalasoft.co.za] . The next time I visited, Windows XP had be reinstalled on the machine because that is what most of the "technies" knew back home, yes the PC was unusable again.
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How is this modded insightful?
If it's too expensive for them to connect to the internet to update their anti-virus, it's too expensive for them to connect to the internet and contract malware. That's where the majority of it is coming from. I don't doubt expense might be part of the reason (running unlicensed/unpatched windows machines or trying to find free software that comes riddled with spyware) but I don't see the connection you are making being the primary reason...
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In most cases the malware is transported to the unconnected PC via a USB stick that was used at an Internet cafe.
Since when did slashdot become the onion? (Score:2)
Rich countries have better education, news at 10.
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Look at the elderly. People who simply did not learn about them are worse with them. I personally pirate quite a bit due to moral dislikes about certain companies decisions(however any game/application i find good/useful I WILL and DO buy. I also Refuse to pirate indie software/games.)
It is far more an educational issue than a money issue, although I won't completely discard money as an issue, It is far more education.
As IT I have removed so many random obvious malware(does bonzibuddy ring a eye twitching b
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Um. Pirate because of moral dislikes about cerain companies? That doesn't raise your eybrows?
Isn't that kind of like "fucking for viginity?"
If you actually had moral qualms about certain companies, you wouldn't be supporting them (yes, that's what I said--ever hear of network effects?) by spreading their product around.
I have moral qualms about quite a few companies, possibly the same ones you do. I don't use their products.
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Not using something when it is useful becomes a general waste of your time to find an alternative that does exactly what the original did(and in most cases less well.) Not paying for said product does not support said company, but also does not waste time.
Also "fucking for virginity" If you have ever fucked a virgin, I am sure you can concur with me that you aren't missing anything. In general that analogy itself makes utterly no sense in this specific incident.
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Sure it does. It's part of an old sixties saying: "Fighting for peace is like fucking for viginity."
Pirating as a moral stance is similarly inconsistent.
One of Microsoft's biggest assets is that people pirate their stuff. They'd rather you buy it, but if you're not going to buy it they'd rather you pirate *theirs* than use someone else's.
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I was more talking about Activision and EA in terms of companies I hate, microsoft is a given...this is slashdot though. You use a Unix variant at least as a hobby on slashdot if not as your main OS.
My interest is more in pirating music from the MPAA/RIAA I may not listen to a Lot of the crap they put out, however I have personally mailed artists money after pirating their music, they can take the 13$ from me, thats fine. I just have no interest in a middleman getting it.
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America is so screwed (Score:1)
Bandwidth, wealth, and malware updates. (Score:2)
IMHO, much of the correlation with broadband and wealth may have to do with the security model of Microsoft: A multi-billion dollar industry building add-on malware protection that works largely by comparing incoming traffic to an ever-growing list of malware "signatures".
To use one of these protection-and-cleanup services you need to do two things:
- Pay a fee periodically. (The poor need not apply.)
- Download an ENORMOUS table of new signatures from time to time. (Those without broadband
They can afford (Score:1)
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+1 because the math is easy: 99.9% of all Malware lives on Windows, hence more Macs means less Malware.
No shit says Sherlock study. (Score:2)
Republican solution is.. (Score:2)
To make sure you're rich.
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Among the actual conservatives, it's to try to help you GET rich.
Of course the Neocons are just in it for the loot.
Rich countries need working computers (Score:1)
Countries are rich for a reason (Score:2, Insightful)
Countries didn't become rich by accident.
It's a combination of several things, starting with higher IQs [wikipedia.org] and then including things like rule of law, hygiene, political stability and emphasis on learning.
In any part of the world, and in every ethnic group, you will find that some countries have broken away from the others and have generally higher intelligence, thus put a priority on things like stability, rule of law, infrastructure, etc.
It's not an accident they're richer.
In life, all things come down to th
ERm (Score:3)
When the dodgy $1 Windows+Office disk comes complete with Malware this is really no surprise. I'm sure the $1 Norton disk also comes with free anti-virus+rootkit.
Jason.
many reasons (Score:2)
There are many reasons why malware is so rampant in poor countries.
1. If majority of population cannot afford buying software legally, even those who can afford do not buy it, because they see no reason to pay relatively huge money for something that almost everyone gets for free. Piracy creates increases the risk not only because some pirated software may include malware, but automatic update is often disabled to prevent the pirated version being detected by the vendor.
2. Old computers often mean that they
windows malware, that is (Score:1)
419 explained (Score:2)
Are they for real? (Score:2)
Look at the spam and malware on your system (if any of the latter). Then do a whois on the IP that the spam and phishing comes from, the original received that has a real IP or domain name. Where do they want your money to *go*?
mark "Nevada? Utah? California? Pennsylvania?"
Really? (Score:2)
Wow, Microsoft. Really?
So you're saying that we can solve all of our problems with malware by simply.... becoming richer?
We never thought about that. Thanks for informing us! We'll get right on that immediately!
Rich countries also get more cancer. (Score:2)
Cancer rates by country (Age-Standardised Rate per 100,000)
Highest
1 Denmark 326.1
2 Ireland 317.0
3 Australia 314.1
4 New Zealand 309.2
5 Belgium 306.8
6 France (metropolitan) 300.4
7 United States of America 300.2
8 Norway 299.1
9 Canada 296.6
10 Czech Republic 295.0
11 Israel 288.3
12 The Netherlands 286.8
Lowest
50 South African Republic 202.0
49 Albania 202.8
48 Montenegro 204.3
47 Romania 205.1
46 Argentina 206.2
45
Herd Immunity (Score:1)
EU crisis (Score:2)