The RSA 2010 Security Conference is just finishing up here in San Francisco, and I’m struck by how many of the conference sessions and keynotes have warned about the threat that socially engineered malware poses to the security of the Internet. Malware has become the scourge of the Internet, and it’s not just the security experts who are worried—the top story in my morning paper yesterday described how a typical malware attack compromised a financial firm’s network. Our data shows that one out of every 250 downloads is the result of a user being tricked into downloading malware to their PC.
We’re proud of the protection SmartScreen® Filter provides to protect IE8 users from such attacks, and I’d like share some of the latest numbers on our level of protection.
Since we launched IE8 in March 2009, SmartScreen has blocked over 560 million attempts to download malware, recently averaging over 3 million blocks per day! Hosted in datacenters around the world, SmartScreen’s URL Reputation Service (URS) has evaluated over 250 billion URLs to help keep IE8 users safe from malware. Even more impressively, since IE7’s Phishing Filter was introduced in 2005, the URS has processed over 5.7 trillion reputation requests in order to block malicious web sites. Every day, Microsoft receives around 300 million telemetry reports from IE8 users and processes 4.1 billion URLs looking for malicious websites and files. On the back end, our systems and analysts evaluate over 1 terabyte of binaries every day to help identify sites delivering malware.
The Q1 2010 NSS Lab’s test shows that Microsoft’s continued investment in SmartScreen is paying off. Since launch, IE8’s SmartScreen Filter has continued to improve its protection against Socially Engineered Malware threats.
IE6 and 7 don’t provide protection against socially-engineered malware. If your family and friends aren’t up-to-date, please encourage them to upgrade to IE 8 for a safer Internet experience.
While IE8 offers the best built-in protection any browser offers against socially engineered malware, you still should follow best-practices to stay safe online. For instance:
You can read more tips and learn about common Internet attacks over on the Security Tips blog.
Stay safe out there!
Eric Lawrence Program Manager
These stats are impressive....
I will be re-posting this on Facebook, it's important for people to know what IE8 has to offer, in comparison with other browsers.
It amazes that homes are still using IE6 or 7. Even if they use a different browser, they should still upgrade.
Why are you still using NSS Lab as your data source, when it was discovered last time that their methodology was nonsense and their data was completely unreliable?
@Jesper, can you please link to a clear explanation of this "discovery" about NSS Labs that you mention. I read the NSS Labs report and it sounds as good a methodology as any to me.
@Frederico NSSLabs test are paid by Microsoft... no wonder IE8 looks awesome in their reports lol
@Jesper, as Frederico said, I also would like to know about that discovery, I want to believe :)
Anyway, I use IE8 in my machines, in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, and so far I've had a great experience, it's fast, secure... but if we talk about web standards, other browers are better in that area.
I look forward to hearing more from IE9! :)
Best regards from Peru!
@Frederico: Jesper didn't bother to read the methodology. It's easier to parrot the talking points of the non-IE fanboys than to actually read the report and decide what he thinks of the methodology himself.
The methodology is sound. It has been endorsed by Trend Micro http://trendmicro.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=749, Gartner, and others. Non of these are friends of MS. Google fans need to start asking Google why they continue to score poorly and refuse to offer their customers equal levels of protection from drive-by attacks as they do socially engineered attacks ( malware & phishing).
So of the sites that host this malware - what percent of it has: Active-x, JScript, VBScript, VML, or CSS expression based attack vectors?
Keeping in mind that if 75% of these sites use these non-web-standard attack vectors all the other browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera & Chrome) are all immune to them by design!
Combine that with the social angle.
Statistically, IE users are less technical and knowledgeable about the Internet and the dangers that lie within.
IE users are more likely to click on dialogs and grant permission to infectious files, download shifty codecs/licenses for windows media player because the porn video they downloaded "claims" it needs it.
an IE user that has not yet learned there are better browsers out there is not likely going to recognize spoofed behavior like a faked yellow security bar that actually initiates the malware download that non-IE users would spot right away as bogus!
Installing a non-IE browser as the default browser on all my families computers was the best thing I ever did. tech support calls dropped by 90% overnight.
What do the IE guys think of Google's Native Client proposal?
I find all this to be very interesting
Activex, you have your stats reversed. 80% of malware attacks are from social engineered attacks that all browsers don't have any protection against since the attack is against the user, not the pc or browser. http://blog.brickhousesecurity.com/2010/02/19/pdfs-make-up-80-of-all-internet-exploits/. The only protection is to have a feature like Smartscreen and keep adobe products up to date.
If you don't agree with the above article, take a look at blog by Trendmicro from about a year ago, where they determined only 20% of malware is installed through exploits. They said the vast majority of malware installations can be traced back to a socially engineered attack.
Please don't throw out SWAG percentages as fact. It does nothing but harm your argument. Also don't get me wrong, I am not an IE zellot, I just believe in an honest factual discussion.
Does blacklisting really scale?
I thought Firefox uses Google as it's blacklist Source, shouldn't they be dead even then?