From Future Tense, an experiment with current computers showed that if you’re online your computer will be attacked. It underscores the need to keep your software current and invest in some defensive (firewall & antivirus) tools.
The experiment involved 6 newer computers running different operating systems. They were turned on, wired up, and left alone for 2 weeks. I found the fact that the WindowsXP machine was attacked within 8 minutes rather alarming. Keep in mind it wasn’t attacked by a person, rather by other infected machines. Once that PC was infected it became the attacker scanning hundreds of machines a minute.
We experienced something like this back in the Fall of 2003. Right before school started some major worms spread across the internet that took advantage of holes in WindowsXP (noted in this article). Because most of the students moving into the dorms had brand new off the shelf PCs they hadn’t been patched to plug the holes. And yes, you guessed it, almost instantly after plugging into the campus network the student machines were infected. Now we have the patches on CDs so we can patch their computers _before_ wiring up. And student computing is actively educating students about the need to buy antivirus and activate a firewall (a firewall in now included in WindowsXP but needs to be turned on).
The full article is at USA Today .
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