and here are some answers [was: Quarantine your infected users spreading malware]

Tue Feb 21 09:25:39 UTC 2006

On Tuesday 21 Feb 2006 06:41, you wrote:
>
> I've seen more than one estimate that most computers *are* infected by at
> least one piece of malware/spyware/etc, (including numbers as high as 90%)

I've seen 95% quoted - certainly my experience if you go looking for malware 
in recent Windows desktop machines using IE and Outlook it is pretty much a 
certainty you'll find it. Most of these tools I was using didn't detect the 
Sony Rootkit, or other malware, so this will always be an underestimate of 
the true extent of the problem, unless one uses fingerprinting and packet 
inspection as the tools of choice for malware detection.

This is very much a Windows only problem, it doesn't affect desktop users of 
other systems at all, possibly in part because they lack critical mass, but 
also because they have more sensible security models. Largely it is an 
Outlook and IE problem.