Windows 8 vulnerable to 15% of most popular malware

As users start to (very) slowly adopt the newly released Windows 8, researchers are intent on finding out whether the new OS version is more secure than the previous ones.

A few days ago, Symantec has shared that although they have detected only one particular variant of Windows 7 ransomware that can affect computers running Windows 8, they do not doubt that malware targeting that particular environment will soon start popping up.

Bitdefender researchers have also taken it upon themselves to check out how Windows 8 and its new security features fare against these “old” threats, and the results are not encouraging.

They tested 385 of the most popular malware against two computers both installed with Windows 8, but one with Windows Defender activated and the other not.

In the first case, they managed to infect the machine with 61 malware samples, while one sample bypassed Windows Defender and failed to execute, while another was effectively blocked from delivering the payload by User Account Control.

The second computer presented less of a challenge: with no help from Windows Defender, the machine was infected with 234 samples!

“Another 138 samples could not be started on the machine on various reasons, six e-threats executed but then crashed, and seven others launched but had their payload was blocked by UAC,” the researchers noted.

It seems that Windows Defender does quite a job, but users obviously shouldn’t rely just on it to keep them protected.