Does your AV update

A recent study done by McAffe shows that nearly half of the surveyed computers in the US either do not have a an AV installed or have signature files that are at least one month old. Roughly one third did not have a firewall enabled

http://download.mcafee.com/products/manuals/en-us/McAfeeNCSA_Analysis09-25-07.pdf?cid=36665

So next tine you are worrying about a zero day attack that hides forever in a rootkit and disables your AV and firewall, just remember there is an awful lot of low hanging fruit out there for the bad guys to pick.

 

Even the freebies auto-update so it's amazing that so many are out of date, probably because of expired AV-license. I'm of the 1/3 that has no software FW installed. I use Kerio 2.1.5 for testing, but don't have it installed currently.

 

I'd say the majority of the problem is made up of newbies whose computers come pre-installed with Symantec or McAfee trials, and don't know that they need to do something to keep their AV protection up after the 30 days run out.

 

OEMs should give a full year of subscription to a suite, not 30/90 days. PC makers, ISPs, Microsoft and law enforcement agencies have big responsibilities for the amount of malware in circulation and the money lost by people.