This link on news.com details a study by AOL and the NCSA that shows that 8 out of 10 PC’s are infected by spyware, and that 90% of these people have no idea about it.
Another snippet from that article that amazes me is that “Nearly three in five users do not know the difference between a firewall and antivirus software.” After all the big viruses and attacks showing up on mainstream news stories people still have not learned that nobody is safe from this stuff. Particularly if you don’t take measures to protect yourself.
On the same security note, this Inquirer article details a new flaw found in the Linux firewalling code, the code can be used to crash the machine, but is not a remote root exploit, so other then disrupting the machine, there is no danger. (but you still should update your kernel.)
Lastly is the news from IBM that Internet attacks are up by 27% in September over the previous 2 months, and that most of the attacks are targeting web server software. (like Microsoft Internet Information Server, IIS and Apache.).
While those people running web servers “should” know enough to protect themselves, home users seem to carrying on, totally oblivious to the dangers, and for that reason I wrote this: http://littlehosting.com/safety/ which is a newbie friendly guide to protecting your Windows machine online with free tools.
Regards
Franki
