Safe Luxury

How come there seems to be a drop in nationwide virus attacks on computer systems?

Used to be, you were reading about computer virus attacks starting in some far away country, and affecting every single computer network in your home country. Some "Denmark student" getting arrested, or a Pakistani diplomat affecting every single IMB network in the world? I don't use any type of virus protection now, yet, I never get any type of spyware. I used to get that crap all the time? What gives, what's changed to make our computer networks safer and "bug" free?

Public Comments

1. most virus attacks come from your own country and since were at war lot of soldiers are deployed with little access to computers and just because there in the armed services doesnt mean they didnt fuck with peoples PC's, like me i was a hacker , but i never hack any ones computer just games and software hacks to help other people get software they needed with out paying 100's of dollars for anti spayware and other dumb stuff/ and not every one is vindictive and mean some people grow out of pissing people off but ever since 911 computer viruses did start to pop less and less
2. I guess one good reason is that people are becoming increasingly aware of virus/spyware/malware attacks and the enormous harm they can do. PC users have lost so much data because of these attacks. Now, there is a motherload of free antivirus/antispyware software on the internet, which you simply download and install. Updates are even free. So, no one really has any good excuse for not being protected. In the end, it's a small price to pay to keep your PC safe.
3. Because virus writers have changed strategies over the last few years. They used to want to infect as many computers as fast as possible before the AV analyses the virus. Nowadays they prefer to infect a few and stay hidden. They make more money that way.
4. Enhanced user knowledge, & better security measures.
5. It's only auto-installing "viruses" and other malware that have decreased. Those ones that require no user intervention, that infect just by visiting the "wrong" website. The ones that target vulnerabilities in Windows. Other forms of malware have increased dramatically. Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) is a hundred times more secure than the first version of XP. And Vista is 10 times more secure than that. Hell, the first version of XP wasn't even firewalled! Operating systems have improved. Malware coders generally like to target their "payloads" at the weakest link in the chain, that which has the most vulnerabilities. These days that is the user, not the operating system. There is far too many people on the internet today that don't have a clue. People who click "yes" to everything. People who disable their firewall to make Limewire work. People who turn-off their anti-virus software because the alerts are too "annoying". There are far too many who will willingly download "Insert latest Hip-hop song title here".exe and than try to install it when prompted! Those who get tricked into downloading a trojan from some shady site because that site said they needed a "codec" to play some video. Those who never update Windows because a friend told them that updating would cause a loss of 1 fps when playing WOW. Honestly, there are tons of people nowadays, who shouldn't even be allowed on the public internet, they are just too unqualified or just plain stupid. Allowing some borderline moronic 12 year old kid with administrative privileges on a Windows computer to have internet access is borderline criminal. And lest you think that allowing the unqualified to have internet access that totally trashes their own PC, doesn't effect you, please do the following: Do a "wikipedia" on "zombie computer" and on "botnet". Allowing idiots on the internet effects us all. There is plenty of malware out there. More than ever. Only the method of propargating it has changed.