Posted on 06/14/2006 7:09:04 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Microsoft today gave the world a rare -- albeit conservative -- glimpse of its view on just how bad the virus and bot problem has gotten for Windows users worldwide. The data comes from 15 months' worth of experience scanning computers with its "malicious-software removal tool," a free component that Microsoft offers Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 users when they download security updates from Microsoft.
The tool has been run approximately 2.7 billion times by at least 270 million unique computers, leading to the removal of 16 million instances of malicious software from 5.7 million unique Windows-based computers over the past 15 months, Microsoft said. Sixty-two percent of those computers had Trojan horse programs on them.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.washingtonpost.com ...
Yes, but it doesn't detect or remove the malware sent out by the company WINSOFTWARE that puts out the malware "winantivirus".
And Microsoft doesn't make it easy to send them drop files so they can develop better detection sets.
270,000,000 / 5,700,000 = 2.11%
2,700,000,000 / 16,000,000 = 0.59%
Sixty-two percent of those computers had Trojan horse programs on them.
Oh - so he does know how to do percentages... why that one, and not the others?
WTF, might as well kick it off early.. ;-)
/suse user
Ask if Microsoft can do percentages.
The 270,000,000 is the population... 5,700,000 is the sample. 16,000,000 is the number of discrete instances of malware found on the sample.
A legitimate question that should be asked is: "Can the results found in the sample be extrapolated to the general population?"
If it can, then we can extrapolate that 167,400,000 of those 270,000,000 computers were infected with at least one Trojan during the past 15 months.
So, is Microsoft's sample valid?
• Combining the data shown in Figure 1 with that shown in Figure 3 allows us to determine that, in the most recent release of the MSRT (March 2006), the rate of infected computers per executions of the tool was 0.28 percent. In other words, the tool removed malware from approximately one in every 355 computers on which it ran. The average rate across all releases from June 2005 to March 2006 is similar, at 0.32 percent, or approximately one in every 311 computers. This infection rate has remained relatively constant across the measurable releases, with the high being 0.4 percent in August 2005 and the low being 0.24 percent in September 2005.
That would make these articles, and the erroneous interpretation of the statistics, FUD.
OK - so the answer is, the number is really really small.
Close enough? :~D
Close.... but I think you misplaced a decimal in this calculation:
2,700,000,000 / 16,000,000 = 0.59%
Should be 5.9%....
but, according to the actual report from MS, those ~16 million malware were only on the 5.7 million infected computers. The reason the number of malware was greater than the number of infected computers was because they found that if a computer was infected, it was likely infected with more than one malware.
So the ~16 Million malware were actually on only ~2.1% of the computers.
Sheesh... I'm getting math challenged too... you were referring to the total number of scans, approximately 10 per computer, right?
put the decimal back... .59%
No I didn't... do it yourself!
2,700,000,000 / 16,000,000 = 0.005925926
but, according to the actual report from MS, those ~16 million malware were only on the 5.7 million infected computers. The reason the number of malware was greater than the number of infected computers was because they found that if a computer was infected, it was likely infected with more than one malware.
I understand that. And that makes perfect sense to me. :~)
Ah- we cross posted.
The only number that's interesting is the % of infected computers, which was 2%, according to the made up numbers in the article. The number of scans doesn't tell us anything, except how some people ran the scan more than once. Who cares about that.
I'm curious what the author's point was. It's not a big number. It doesn't indicate a problem of great magnitude. But the author seems to think it's a big problem. What's the problem?
I'll have to reformat the hard drive again. Okay, it was my fault for allowing some weasel web site to 'help' me surf the web. Whatever.
MSoft admits that IE has more security faults than Pearl Harbor. No kidding.
Both of the articles I found were mis-understanding the Microsoft Report... and the authors assumed the 5.7 million computers were a statistical sample of the total population and based their stories on that mistake.
One even had the headline "Microsoft's Malware Report: 60 Percent of PCs Infected" which I posted in FR! Even more embarassing is that headline comes from the supposedly pro-PC TechNewsWorld.com. They were ready to believe it.
Sometimes perception is more telling than fact.
If you installed this thing, how is it MS's fault?
Do you want a computer that refuses to install software you select to install?
I guess so :~)
The tool does not target spyware and potentially unwanted software. Windows users should download and install an up-to-date anti-spyware application to detect and remove spyware and potentially unwanted software from their computers. Windows Defender, Microsoft’s anti-spyware solution, in beta at the time of this report, is offered to genuinely licensed Windows users at no charge at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsdefender.
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