Disinfections Drop in Microsoft Anti-Malware Report – PC Magazine
The SIR is based on telemetry gathered by Microsoft from a variety of sources, from the Malicious Software Removal Tool to their Forefront and Security Essentials anti-malware solutions the anti-virus in Hotmail, to link scanning in Messenger and Bing.
It seems like we see nothing else at times, but Microsoft is actually seeing a relative decline in rogue anti-malware. There were actually fewer disinfections than in the past, a drop from 16.8 million to 13.4 million. The growth in this time period has been from more conventional worms, nearly doubling in volume. Meanwhile, some older threats like Zlob are dropping precipitously in volume.
Microsoft also sees an increase in malware that drops other threats, like Koobface and win32.chadem, a password stealer. Some of the malware highlighted in the report, such as the taterf worm, are almost at Conficker volume levels, but nowhere near as famous.
Microsoft argues that legal enforcement actions against the scareware merchants and the work of the FTC have been key in this area, as have some technological solutions like IE8's SmartScreen filter and, yes, even user education. I'm sure there's no way to measure that.
The advice to users is just plain boring because we've been saying it for years: Stay up to date on everyone's security updates and run updated AV on all machines.
Originally posted to the PCMag.com security blog, Security Watch.
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