14 DAY TRIAL // Windows is by far the most attacked operating system on the market right now, with many people pointing to the security offered by Microsoft's flagship product as one of the reasons why lots of users are falling victims to these attempts.
But as far as Ghareeb Saad, senior security researcher with the Global Research & Analysis Team, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Kaspersky Lab, is concerned, Windows is the target of so many attacks because it's the most popular operating system on the desktop and hackers obviously want to have a higher success rate when scanning for potential targets.
And he does make sense. Windows is currently installed on more than 90 percent of the desktop computers worldwide, statistics are showing, so hackers looking for potential targets are clearly searching for PCs powered by Microsoft's operating system.
Saad says that even though Windows is considered to be an unsecure operating system, which isn't necessarily true, there is no such thing as a completely secure platform right now, as cybercriminals are developing new exploits capable of taking advantage of every single found flaw.
“There's no absolutely safe operating system at the moment. The more popular the software is, the more it is targeted by cybercriminals,” he was quoted as saying by News24.
Mac OS X and Linux systems are often considered to be operating systems that are impossible to break into, but Saad explains that this isn't the case, as several exploits developed to hack into these two platforms have already been developed and made millions of victims across the world.
“The myth about Mac OS security was demolished when in 2012 the quantity of created anti-virus entries grew by 30% in comparison with 2011, and notorious Flashfake Trojan managed to create the biggest Apple botnet which consisted of 100 million devices all over the world,” he pointed out.
Microsoft itself tried to make Windows 8 a lot more secure than its predecessors and now says that it's six times more unlikely to get hacked as compared to Windows 7.
The company is offering Windows Defender as the built-in anti-virus solution that comes with the same powerful features as any other third-party security app that's now available on Windows. Although it's often considered just a basic security program, Windows Defender does have real-time scanning, virus definitions updates and other advanced features that are already party of the majority of software on the market.