Are all Antivirus softwares safe?

According to a report from Microsoft, fake security software is growing on the Net. The number of vulnerabilities it is down from 2007, except for its own applications. Each semester, Microsoft, like other publishers, publishes its report on information security. It must be said that the U.S. firm has an advantage in weight to take the temperature of Risk: the collection of information is based on 450 million computers worldwide.

First observation fake security software have proliferated on the Internet. These applications exploit the fear of the Internet, usually by displaying messages alerting an infection. Once the antivirus installed, it will attempt to extort money from the user. These fake security tools can also steal personal data and information as well.

Win32/Renos virus totaled 4.4 million infections in the recently past time. Microsoft has detected malware and family Win32/Spyware Secure 260 000 computers between July and December 2008. This represents an increase of 87.4% in six months. Win32/Renos, another one of these programs gave rise to 4.4 million infections worldwide over the period (+ 66.6%). The sources of threats largest number of infections in the second half are the various Trojans. Trojans (various, downloaders and injectors) account for more than 50% of infections.

The situations vary significantly between different countries of world. In Brazil, the threat most common (greater than 50%) consists of programs sniffer passwords and monitoring tools. In Korea, the worms that cause the most infections (28%). The Trojans (all categories) remain the most serious threat. Another finding of the report Microsoft application vulnerabilities continue to pose a major risk to security, even though the numbers tend to decrease. Between 2007 and 2008, the total number of vulnerabilities of high index (52% of all faults) fell by 16% compared to 2007.

This downward trend in the number of vulnerabilities appears forget Microsoft applications. Between the first and second half of 2008, the publisher notes an increase of 67.2% of faults for its products (42 security bulletins about vulnerabilities 97). From 2007 to 2008 it rose by 16.8% with a total of 78 security bulletins encompassing 155 vulnerabilities. On the Operating System, Microsoft said in its report noted a rate of infection correlated with the length of the OS. Plus an operating system is old and the more successful attacks increases. The infection rate for Windows Vista is much lower than its predecessor, Windows XP, regardless of the configuration; specifies the document. The rate of infection of Windows Vista SP1 is for example 60.6% lower than Windows XP SP3. A fact that Microsoft checks on both client OS on servers.