for those of you on the internet, you need to read this article “how secure is your computer“. we hear every day about viruses and worms infesting computers without the users knowledge. this article did their own tests of computers “out of the box” without doing anything but connecting it to the internet. here’s a snippet of some of the findings:

The Macintosh system received three attacks. Two of the Linux systems received eight attacks each, though Red Hat’s version of Linux received no attacks at all.

But in the end, none of the attacks were successful.

The Linux and Macintosh sytems were installed out of the box without any additional security patches. Windows SP 2 automatically downloads the latest security patches from the Microsoft website.

Windows Service Pack 1, or SP 1, however, was another story. It’s an older version of Windows that was sold in computer stores until a few months ago.

SP 1 was attacked 4,857 times. It was infested within 18 minutes by the Blaster and Sasser worms. Within an hour it became a “bot,” or a machine controlled by a remote computer, and began attacking other Windows computers.

in short, update your computers regularly whether you use windows, mac os x, or linux. but if you’re on windows xp sp1, then you really need to update!

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Post written by Bwana