Clean System to Zombie Bot in Four Minutes.
Amadaeus writes “According to the latest study by USA Today and
Avantgarde, it takes less than 4 minutes for an unpatched Windows XP
SP1 system to become part of a botnet. Avantgarde has the statistics in
their abstract. Stats of note: Although Macs and PC's got hit with
equal opportunity, the XP SP1 machine was hit with 5 LSASS and 4 DCOM
exploits while the Mac remained clean. The Linux desktop also was
impenetrable, but only was only targeted by 0.26% of all attacks.” See
also our story on the survival time for unpatched systems. [Slashdot] [Privacy Digest: Privacy News (Civil Rights, Encryption, Free Speech, Cryptography)]