VistaKnowledge.com

In a recent post on the Microsoft Developer Network blog, Austin Wilson, director of Windows client security product management at Microsoft, dismissed a claim made last week by security vendor PC Tools Software that Windows Vista was more vulnerable to malware than Windows 2000.

Microsoft, Wilson explained, studies malware carefully and publishes its findings in its biannual Security Intelligence Report, which is based on data derived from 450 million uses of the company’s Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) each month. In addition, he said, Microsoft conducts such research in accordance with the test methodology prescribed by the Anti Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO).”Our results published in the April 2008 version of the Security Intelligence Report show that Windows Vista is significantly less susceptible to malware than older operating systems,” said Wilson. “In fact, from June through December 2007, using proportionate numbers, the MSRT found and cleaned malware from 60.5% fewer Windows Vista-based computers than from computers running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installed.”

Wilson noted that the “MSRT found and cleaned malware from 44% fewer Windows Vista-based computers than Windows 2000 SP4 computers and 77% fewer than from computers running Windows 2000 SP3.”

Wilson is not alone in his skepticism of PC Tools’ report. Dennis Kudin, CTO of Ukraine-based Information Security Center Ltd., also dismissed PC Tools’ findings in a Windows Live Spaces blog post. The malware counted in such studies often isn’t a real threat, he said. The issue, he claims, is serious threats, malware that runs at the system kernel level and requires administrative privileges.

“Most Windows 2000 users work as administrators by default, so they are vulnerable to any kind of threats,” Kudin wrote. “In Windows Vista this vital problem is solved by User Account Control technology. So Vista is definitely much more secure than Windows 2000 and I don’t understand PC Tools’ attempt to overthrow this axiom by far-fetched conclusions in their survey.”

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