TMCnet News
Microsoft warning on security updates [Gulf Daily News (Bahrain)](Gulf Daily News (Bahrain) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) MANAMA: With 22 per cent of personal computers in the country still running the Windows XP operating system, many Bahrain enterprises are vulnerable to malware, a top Microsoft official has warned. According to Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group director Tim Rains, Windows XP users are being urged to upgrade to either Windows 7 or Windows 8 before support for the older operating system ends next year. "When support for Windows XP ends in April, systems running the OS will effectively have a 'zero date' vulnerability forever," Mr Rains said. He was speaking exclusively to the GDN on the sidelines of Dubai 2013 'Information Security Symposium', which is Microsoft's platform to address priority topics in the field of IT security. "When Microsoft releases a security update, security researchers and criminals will many times reverse engineer the security update in short order in an effort to identify the specific section of code that contains the vulnerability addressed by the update," he said. "But after April 8, next year, organisations that continue to run Windows XP won't have this advantage over attackers any longer." He claimed hackers will reverse engineer updates in the first security package released after XP is no longer supported as soon as it is issued and attempt to apply them to the older operating system. "Since a security update will never become available for Windows XP to address these vulnerabilities, Windows XP will essentially have a 'zero day' vulnerability forever," he said. "Organisations need a level of certainty about the integrity of their systems. Minimising the number of systems running unsupported operating systems is helpful in achieving that". Earlier, in an address at the symposium, Mr Rains shared the second quarterly updates on Microsoft's Security Intelligence Report for the region. The report said that malware was found on 13 of every 1,000 computers scanned in Bahrain in the second quarter this year, compared to the worldwide average of 5.8. This, Mr Rains said, was partly because of the relatively higher number of XP computers. In the quarter, the percentage of computers in Bahrain encountering malware was about the same as the worldwide average of 21.7pc. "The encounter rate for a population is typically much greater than its infection rate, because real-time security software blocks most malware before it can infect the computer," he said. The most common category of malware in Bahrain during the quarter was miscellaneous trojans. It was encountered by 11.9pc of computers, down from 12.4pc in the first quarter. The second most common category was worms. It was encountered by 10.2pc of all computers, up from 9.8pc in the first quarter. The third most common category in Bahrain was viruses, which was encountered by 10.2pc of all computers, up from 4.9pc in the first quarter. The statistics presented were generated by Microsoft security programmes and services running on computers in Bahrain. [email protected] (c) 2013 Al Hilal Publishing & Marketing Group Provided by Syndigate.info, an Albawaba.com company |