This is happening today, every day. Even if you refuse to believe it.
All of which is equally applicable to every other Windows OS, and is a
greater threat because there are more of them in use today, in toto, than
there are of XP. People don't patch Vista or Win 7 or Win 8 either. They
don't patch IE on those OSes, and idiots keep writing new web-based
software that won't work on more secure browsers. They don't keep their
anti-malware software up to date on those new OSes either. Nothing has
magically changed about this going from Win XP to a newer OS.
MS OS security is not "improving" as a whole; they just continue to fix
what they can identify as broken as a result of demo or real attacks. Every
day somebody figures out a new way to attack a new OS, and then that has to
be fixed. The newer the OS, the more people are trying to attack it.
Relatively fewer people are figuring out new attacks for old OSes. How many
people do you think are working on new ways to attack Windows 2000 today?
How many people will be working on new ways to attack Windows XP in 2
years, as compared to today?
Anything can be hacked; any security can be broken (just ask the NSA);
nothing is safe. That is true today, and it will be true five, ten, and
twenty years from now, for Windows and any other OS. The fact that some OS
designs are harder to crack than others is irrelevant. If the motivation to
crack it is high enough, it will be cracked. There is no magic design "fix"
that entirely removes the danger. It can't be done.
Today the bad guys aren't script kiddies goofing around to impress their
friends. They are organized criminals, rogue governments, and terrorist
organizations. They are principally looking to steal money, and
secondarily, to develop options to damage or destroy critical IT
infrastructure. Malware development costs them money, and they play the
percentages. If a "hack" doesn't offer those opportunities in a big way,
they don't spend time on it.
Older OSes are safer from current malware development than newer OSes,
because the motivation to break newer OSes is much greater, because it is
more remunerative in those two ways, than the motivation to attack older
OSes. This isn't rocket science; it's common sense.
And the extent to which people do not keep their OS, browser, and
anti-malware software up to date does not vary between OSes. So this source
of problems is constant; it is not greater for XP than for 8.1. And there
is more Vista, 7, and 8.1 combined running today than XP. Again, common sense.
Last time we had this discussion, I cited overwhelming evidence from the
web that Android phones are the biggest target for current malware. I don't
remember what the percentage was then, but as of January of this year, it
was 99%:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2323418/android-and-java-top-security-targets-for-malware-and-hacks
Java applications are also strong targets according to this article, but
that's not OS-dependent.
Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org
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