astirusty
Premium
join:2000-12-23
Bartlesville, OK
 ·AT&T Southwest
|  Windows 2000 more secure than Vista.
Say what? and only 37% more secure than XP?
"However, recent research conducted with statistics from over 1.4 million computers within the ThreatFire community has shown that Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight year old Windows 2000 operating system, and only 37% more secure than Windows XP." Hey how about a refund? Oops forgot about those pesky EULAs.
"Ironically, the new operating system has been hailed by Microsoft as the most secure version of Windows to date," said Simon Clausen, CEO of PC Tools, in a statement. Obligatory MS rebuttal...
"ThreatFire vulnerability comparison numbers certainly don't reflect our vulnerability findings from the malicious software removal tool (MSRT), which ran on over 400 million machines in December 2007. From June 2007 through December 2007, the MSRT found malware on 2.8% of the Windows Vista machines it ran on, vs. 7.2% of Windows XP SP2 machines. It found malware on 5% of Windows 2000 SP4 machines and 12.2% of Windows 2000 SP3 machines. Note that for Windows 2000 this spans both client and server machines." Link to article: »www.informationweek.com/news/win···07601217
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Do yourself a favor, just say no to anything Windows. |
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mikeyGG
@anonymouse.org | The massive FUD campaign against Vista continues...  |
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Cabal
Premium
join:2007-01-21
02101 | reply to astirusty
Vista isn't more secure than XP, it's just 37% slower at propagating malware.  |
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jester121
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | reply to astirusty
Wow, I wish we could rely on the Malicious Software Removal tool to clean EVERYTHING bad off of PCs. Since it doesn't, their statistics are pretty meaningless. |
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bcruze
join:2006-03-03
USA | reply to astirusty
your computer is as safe as the idiot in front of the keyboard..... |
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almex
join:2001-09-18
Scottsdale, AZ
clubs: | reply to astirusty
Nice sig: "Do yourself a favor, just say no to anything Windows."
No bias there. Nope. Definitely no bias.
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"Careful, we don't want to learn from this!" --Calvin & Hobbes |
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Vista RTM
join:2006-09-13
ChilliwackBC |  reply to astirusty
Windows 3.1 88% more secure.
Hmmm.... |
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astirusty
Premium
join:2000-12-23
Bartlesville, OK
·AT&T Southwest
| reply to almex
said by almex  :Nice sig: ... No bias there. ... First, thanks. Second, at least I am up front about my sentiment towards a monopoly.
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Do yourself a favor, just say no to anything Windows. |
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astirusty
Premium
join:2000-12-23
Bartlesville, OK
·AT&T Southwest
| reply to Vista RTM
said by Vista RTM :Windows 3.1 88% more secure. Might have something to do with far less bloat, no IE, no Outlook Express, no Active X...  
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Do yourself a favor, just say no to anything Windows. |
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mikenolan7
Premium
join:2005-06-07
Torrance, CA
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to astirusty
Interesting statistics. This indicates that Windows 2000 is significantly more secure than XP. I have found the 2000 security related controls available to the user to be somewhat limited when compared with XP. Anyone know why 2000 would fare so much better? |
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rawwhide
join:2000-09-03
The Moon
clubs:
·AT&T DSL Service
| said by mikenolan7 :I have found the 2000 security related controls available to the user to be somewhat limited when compared with XP. Mind elaborating on what you call "security related controls". I certainly hope you are not talking about windows firewall.
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TinFoilers UFO Union of America!!
TinFoilers UFO Union Local 101... |
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mikenolan7
Premium
join:2005-06-07
Torrance, CA | I was referring mostly to the controls available within the Microsoft Management Console. |
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Blackbird
Built for Speed
Premium
join:2005-01-14
Fort Wayne, IN
·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to astirusty
I wonder... wouldn't an older OS version have a longer window of malware exposure than a newer one? In which case, one might expect its odds of containing malware to be higher, all other things being equal. On the other hand, that reasoning doesn't take into account any recurrent clean-up efforts of users to remove previous infections. I suppose the only way to get an apples-apples comparison between OS versions would be to track the re-infection rates of the same set of computers over time and slice that up by OS version.
In any case, to me it seems there's way too many variables and unknowns to draw too many hard conclusions from this data in the way it's presented.
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If God wanted us to work with electrons, He'd make them big enough to see... |
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NetFixer
Snarl for the camera please
Premium
join:2004-06-24
Murfreesboro, TN
 ·Vonage
·Cingular Wireless
·AT&T CallVantage
·AT&T Southeast
·Comcast
·Covad Communications
| said by Blackbird :In any case, to me it seems there's way too many variables and unknowns to draw too many hard conclusions from this data in the way it's presented. Or as Benjamin Disraeli and/or Mark Twain said:
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
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We can never have enough of nature.
We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
Test your firewall. |
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Its a Secret
Never mind
Premium
join:2008-02-23
Calgary, AB | reply to astirusty
Perhaps it all comes down to the fact Win 2000 wasn't as popular as 95, 98, etc. In my mind, it was more of a 'geek' OS than the others, more functional and not as 'pretty'. But I may be wrong...
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A triple espresso, please... |
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lawrence171
Evilly Yours - Evilness
join:2001-12-24
Canada
·Acanac Inc.
| reply to bcruze
said by bcruze :your computer is as safe as the idiot in front of the keyboard..... That's so not true Its ALWAYS Microsoft's fault. When the same thing happens on other OSes, its the user's fault; however, when the user is using a Microsoft product, its always Microsoft's fault.
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What I used to be I no longer am... God, why can't you freeze time for my sake? |
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rawwhide
join:2000-09-03
The Moon
clubs:
·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to mikenolan7
said by mikenolan7 :I was referring mostly to the controls available within the Microsoft Management Console. I maybe mistaken, but 99.9% of home users run as admin. Do you run threatfire on any of your companies/organizations machines? I am pretty sure that these results are from a home users perspective not an admins. I guess it is possible that some of the machines that were polled were in a business setting running threatfire, but I highly doubt it.
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TinFoilers UFO Union of America!!
TinFoilers UFO Union Local 101... |
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bcastner
Premium,MVM
join:2002-09-25
Chevy Chase, MD
clubs:
·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to astirusty
If anyone can make sense of the claim that "Vista is.... only 37% more secure than Windows XP" then God bless them. To me, it is a completely senseless statement.
The only sensible statements made by the Author of this Report are these two:
quote:
According to statistics gathered from users of PC Tools' ThreatFire security service, Vista let 639 threats per thousand computers through, compared with 586 for Windows 2000, 478 for Windows 2003, and 1,021 for Windows XP.
quote:
vulnerability findings from the malicious software removal tool (MSRT), which ran on over 400 million machines in December 2007. From June 2007 through December 2007, the MSRT found malware on 2.8% of the Windows Vista machines it ran on, vs. 7.2% of Windows XP SP2 machines. It found malware on 5% of Windows 2000 SP4 machines and 12.2% of Windows 2000 SP3 machines.
1. Does ThreatFire have over 400 million observations per Month from which to draw its conclusions? They do not specify, but it seems improbable.
2. Is the ThreatFire Community a fair and representative sample of the Windows end-user Community? There is no evidence provided that this is so. My gut instinct would be that this Community is very far from being a representation of the entire end-user Community.
3. We are not told what constitutes a threat found. I assume it is whatever the ThreatFire heuristics decided was a threat. I see no evidence that adjustments were made for false positives. I know from reading the "ThreatFire Blog" that they frequently give themselves praise for their low amount of False positives. And I know from reading the ThreatFire Forum that False Positives are common from the heuristics. But no adjustment was seemingly made for false positive reports by the application.
4. The conclusions from the study are based on the number of threats found per 1,000 computers. For Vista, the number of threats found was higher than those found on Win2k, and lower than those found on XP. From this the Study draws a conclusion about the relative "susceptability" of each OS to infection. This is an absolutely outrageous assertion to have been made. This attempts to exclude completely the browsing habits of the end-users as a factor in the average number of infections found; to normalize the ThreatFire Community with the entire potential universe of Windows users; and to impute any differences in average infections found to an inherent OS "susceptability" to infection. An unbelievable and simply incredible leap of faith, logic and a conclusion to have drawn.
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MS-MVP 2004 - -2008, ASAP Member
Users Helping Users
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dave
Premium,MVM
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio | reply to astirusty
How many of today's virus-writers are targetting Windows 2000, anyway? |
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Cheese
Premium
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL
clubs:
| reply to Its a Secret
said by Its a Secret :Perhaps it all comes down to the fact Win 2000 wasn't as popular as 95, 98, etc. In my mind, it was more of a 'geek' OS than the others, more functional and not as 'pretty'. But I may be wrong... Win2k was a business OS, so of course it would not have been as popular. |
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