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03 November 2004
Posted in
International
The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the mi2g Intelligence Unit over 12 months reveals that the world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin.
The last twelve months have witnessed the deadliest annual period in terms of malware - virus, worm and trojan - proliferation targeting Windows based machines in which over 200 countries and tens of millions of computers worldwide have been infected month-in month-out.
The latest mi2g Intelligence Unit study analyses 235,907 successful digital breaches against permanently connected - 24/7 online - computers across the globe. The nearly quarter million digital breaches carried out by hackers span twelve months from November 2003 to October 2004. Global proliferation data from over 459 malware species since the start of 2004 has also been analysed.
The sample of breached computing environments is holistic and possesses some anti-virus protection and basic security at the very least. It consists of micro entities - homes and small offices without a separate firewall unit; small entities - organisations with a turnover of below $7 million with a separate firewall unit; medium entities - organisations with a turnover between $7 million and $40 million with a separate firewall unit and basic intrusion detection; and large entities - organisations with a turnover in excess of $40 million with firewall layers, intrusion detection systems and dedicated computer security staff.
The study also reveals that Linux has become the most breached 24/7 online computing environment in terms of manual hacker attacks overall and accounts for 65.64% of all breaches recorded, with 154,846 successfully compromised Linux 24/7 online computers of all flavours. The number of successful manual hacker attacks against Microsoft Windows based online computers has remained steady and accounts for 25.19% of all breaches recorded, with 59,419 successfully compromised Windows targets of all versions. In sharp contrast, the number of successful hacker attacks against Mac OS X or BSD based online computers has demonstrated a declining trend and accounts for just 4.82% of all breaches recorded, with 11,370 successfully compromised BSD targets of all flavours including Apple.
The complete press release can be viewed at....
http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/021104.php
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