Malware Contamination on Windows 7 High, While for XP Low

In its latest edition of Security Intelligence Report that Microsoft released on May 12, 2011, the company reveals that the infection rate on Windows 7 rose over 30% in H2-2010, while that on Windows XP dropped over 20%.

Says Principal Group Program Manager Jeff Williams for Microsoft malware Protection Center, the rate of contamination on Windows 7 increased, that's because of more malware attacks prevailing in cyber space. Computerworld.com published this on May 12, 2011.

Notably, during July-December 2010, there was a mean rate of more than 4 32-bit Windows 7 computers getting infected for every 1,000 such computers, a rise of 33% compared to about 3 such PCs getting infected for every 1,000 during H1-2010.

Furthermore according to the report, computers with 64-bit Windows 7 were less infected, with 2.5 such PCs getting contaminated among every 1,000 all through 2010.

There was also an increase in contaminations on Windows Vista Service Pack 2, the most recent version of the problematic operating system between July and December 2010, the report indicates.

Meanwhile, the study paper as well discusses the countries where malware infections are the greatest. It says that based on an examination of exploits and security flaws existing on over 600m client PCs, approximately 11-12m computers within the USA have malware contraction every three months. This figure has been computed from Windows PCs along with PCs, which have Microsoft's security programs enabled; however, there's an enormous margin between the first and second spots. Thus in Brazil, merely 2.0 computers were infected among 2.9m every quarter during 2010, while China following in second place had an infection rate of 1.9m PCs per 2.2m.

Nevertheless, the percentage of contaminations for every computer, changes the picture since Turkey in particular displayed contaminations for every 1,000 personal computers scrutinized. Says Microsoft, in Turkey, malware contaminated 36.8 computers from a total of 1,000 during 2010. Additional countries showing large contamination percentages included Spain at 36.1%, Korea at 34.8% and Taiwan at 29.7%. Conversely, nations having low contamination percentages included Japan with 4.4%, India -3.8%, Austria -3.4%, Philippines -3.1%, Belarus -1.6%, Bangladesh -1.4%, and Mongolia -1.3%.

Related article: Malware Authors Turn More Insidious

» SPAMfighter News - 5/21/2011