Week 9 reflective post

Security threats on the internet are one of the things that everyone needs to be aware of. Malware and spyware are probably the biggest threats that regular users as well as businesses need to be aware of. Unfortunately the way Microsoft Windows works and its default configuration is aiding spyware and malware distributors in infecting as many Windows computers connected to internet as possible. Another problem is that Internet Explorer is integrated into Windows kernel, so any security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer are potentially exposing also Windows kernel which is very bad thing.

Since 99% of malware and spyware is targeting Microsoft operating systems and its inherent security vulnerabilities, together with other defense mechanisms against spyware and malware, effective defense against malware and spyware is to not use MS Windows operating systems, but OpenSolaris, Linux or Apple’s OS X. They can all do things that Windows computers can and if necessary they can also run Windows applications in their OS (through Wine project on Linux) or in virtual machines (in Linux, OpenSolaris and OS X). The problem with malware and spyware is so big that over 70% of emails send through internet today are all spam originating from computers infected with malware and spyware. This is separate from all credit card and identity fraud that is committed using the information found on infected computers.