In 2012, malware increased by its highest margin in the past four years, with emerging threats such as mobile ‘drive-by downloads’, Twitter-driven botnets and an explosion in Android malware all helping to bolster malicious activity. In the following infographic, security vendor ZoneAlarm takes a look at the ways in which malware are infecting us — most involve common computing tasks that you probably performed today.
Malware picture from Shutterstock
As you’d expect from a vendor-produced document, the below infographic gets a bit preachy towards the end, but it still throws up some interesting facts and statistics — especially if you don’t have any virus protection on your computer at all (in which case you’ve probably stumbled onto the wrong website).
All of the supplied costings are in US dollars, but you can probably chuck 10-20 percent on top to get a rough Australian estimate.
Comments
9 responses to “The Internet’s Dirtiest Malware Tricks [Infographic]”
Cost of a “basic” setup: zero. Windows 7 has a basic firewall built in, and MS Security essentials is free.
Yes there are other products, some better, some free. I’m just pointing out you don’t even need to leave the MS product range to get basic protection.
I know it’s annoying of me to point this out, but windows itself isn’t free. MSE is bundled though, and is a solid option.
If you really truly have $0 to spend on new software, Ubuntu is a great option, especially if you’re running old hardware.
True. But – to catch a virus, at least 2 assumptions have been made.
1: you have a working PC, with an OS installed on it.
2: you have a working network connection.
If you argue about the cost of the OS, then it’s logical to bring in the cost of the network. Once you do that, a great cost-saver is: don’t connect to the Internet. Buy all your software, and register over the phone.
Yeah, true.
Windows 8, firewall and anti-virus built-in. Other vendors may spruik their products effectiveness when in reality none are perfect, and most perform as well as the free Microsoft versions.
Also for those who have a IPv6 capable router with SPI firewall, note that it is useless if your internet connection supports IPv6 (Internode), so you need a firewall on every PC you have.
I think the real message is: if you are still running Windows XP, you need to upgrade to something more robust.
replace computer?? you don’t need to replace a computer because of a virus and you don’t need to repair it either…just re install the damn os
pathetic ad aimed at morons but unfortunately idiots will fall for it
I bet Apple is behind this.
which is why i do a clone every 2 months or so and copy apps to external at download … run MWB .. CCleaner .. MSE ..daily …. no problems …
Really great infographic. My company, Spikes, has a complimentary approach to av, which removes the possibility of malware coming from a browser. We physically separate the browser from the client system, moving it outside of the firewall, the stream a hardened, performance optimized browser vm to the client.