MS scolds businesses for failing to eradicate 7-year-old malware

Zero-day threats and custom malware get all the publicity, but age-old malware strains including ZeuS and Conficker remain active in UK corporates. “The bad guys don’t have to be smart, they can use something that’s 7-8 years old,” Stuart Aston, chief security advisor at Microsoft UK, told delegates at the RSA Unplugged mini- …

[Phil O'Sophical]

Clean China - maybe the Great Firewall has it's uses?

one of the lowest rates of infection on workers and consumers’ PCs.

one of the lowest rates of access to dodgy porm sites by workers and consumers’ PCs

FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is the malware cesspit

How do people get off on calling China a cesspit when it's Microsoft that created the gloppy software goo that invites the software diseases filing up said pit?

We need a takedown of Microsoft headquarters to get them to stop producing this crap, Windows is an attractive nuisance and the world has had enough!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Microsoft is the malware cesspit

And Chinese consumers and business who stole said software

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Microsoft is the malware cesspit

Indeed! Entire WAREHOUSES of ghostly Microsoft IP have DISAPPEARED without a trace.

[Dan Paul]

Re: Microsoft is the malware cesspit (@ AC)

Businesses who stole said MS software and added their own malware to the ISO before they sold it on.

[Daniel B.]

Re: Microsoft is the malware cesspit (@ AC)

Stealing. You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Hint: There's a reason why theft and copyright infringement are treated as separate offenses in most jurisdictions.

[Amphibious RawCod]

Re: Microsoft is the malware cesspit

I'm assuming you are using "attractive" in the sense of magnets here, as opposed to beauty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Microsoft is the malware cesspit

Google and Wikipedia defines "attractive nusiance" as:

In the law, ... the "attractive nuisance doctrine" states that a landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on the land if the injury is caused by a hazardous object or condition on the land that is likely to attract children who are unable to appreciate the risk posed by the object or condition.

Seems rather appropriate.

[Anonymous Coward]

"MS scolds businesses for failing to eradicate 7-year-old malware"

While MS themselves are still busy fixing bugs that are a lot older than 7 years...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "MS scolds businesses for failing to eradicate 7-year-old malware"

As have Linux and Apple.

Can't be arsed to look for it, just use a search engine plenty of examples.

[Henry Wertz 1]

Scold away I guess

I'm not going to jump on the "hating on Microsoft bandwagon", there's plenty already doing that in this thread. But, I guess all I can say is "scold away", people just seem to love running ancient, unpatched software - not just Windows. Sometimes it really is a standalone system, so if everything works who cares what it is running. But often times, they will justify it by claiming they'll keep the system offline, but in reality get sloppy and put it online anyway. And even more often, they'll just pretend it's not a problem, stick their fingers in their ears, go "la-la-la!!!" and then when the system gets massively infected, start up with the "Don't you hate it when computers (insert litany of problems that computers don't have, 7-year-old unpatched software has them.)"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Scold away I guess

I just fried a $285 motherboard in a moment of inattention. Ouch. I put serious roadblocks in my way to make sure the hardware or software stuff that shouldn't go near the internet won't. All it takes, though, is a moment of stress or fatigue or whatever and what do you know, overcome the obstacles and put it on the 'net and bang! I clean up enough wreckage as is, just with the relations.

Aside: there are serious unpatched vulnerabilities that Microsoft hasn't ever cleaned up in the CVE database. Handy for pen-tests. I'm sure the bad guys know them too. Scold away.