Showing posts with label microsoft windows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label microsoft windows. Show all posts

04 March 2011

Malware at the Heart of the BBC's Decline

Anyone who has been following me on Twitter or identi.ca will have noticed that I have a bee in my bonnet - actually, make that a Beeb in my bonnet - about the BBC.

In fact, I have several - including the fact that I really want it to be the best broadcasting organisation in the world, as it once was. But my other bee/Beeb is that its journalistic standards in the few areas where I can claim some knowledge are pretty woeful.

This is seen nowhere more clearly than in its coverage of malware.

To read the reports on the BBC website (I don't watch UK television, so I've no idea what happens there, but suspect it's just as bad), you'd think that malware were some universal affliction, an unavoidable ill like death and taxes. Rarely does the BBC trouble its readers' pretty little heads with the tiresome fact that the overwhelming majority of viruses and trojans affect one operating system, and one operating system only: Microsoft Windows.

To see this, try the following experiment. Search on the BBC news site for "microsoft windows virus" or "microsoft windows trojan" or "microsoft windows malware", and you'll get a few dozen hits, not all of which refer to Microsoft malware.

But try the same searches without the words "microsoft windows", and you will get many more hits every year (try "computer malware", for example), very few of which mention that such malware is almost exclusively for Microsoft's platform.

That sin of omission has now been matched by an equally telling sin of commission. For hot on the heels of the first serious Android viruses, we have a report on BBC news spelling out the terrible facts:

More than 50 applications available via the official Android Marketplace have been found to contain a virus.

Analysis suggests that the booby-trapped apps may have been downloaded up to 200,000 times.

The malicious apps were copies of existing applications, such as games, that had been repackaged to include the virus code.

Fifty applications, can you believe it? Terrifying stuff. And downloaded no less than 200,000 times...shocking.

Of course, the fact that back in 2007

Symantec detected more than 711,912 novel threats which brings the total number of malicious [Microsoft Windows] programs that the security firm's anti-virus programs detect to 1,122,311.

as reported by the BBC in one of its rare balanced pieces on the subject, rather puts those 50 Android programs in context. Similarly, if you consider how many *billions* of times all those Windows viruses have been downloaded over the years, the 200,000 Android downloads pale into insignificance. And yet the BBC chooses not to provide any of that background information.

And it hasn't finished there. Not content with reporting on the Android virus without providing any context, the BBC article then goes on to trash - guess what? - yes, Android's open approach, via this quotation:

"This greater openness of the developer environment has been argued to foster an atmosphere of creativity," he wrote, "but as Facebook have already discovered it is also a very attractive criminal playground."

Again, the missing context is that the *closed* world of Windows has not only provided a rather larger and more attractive "criminal playground", but has caused tens of billions of dollars of economic damage every year according to one estimate. Rather more than just a playground for criminals, one might say - an entire global industry.

All-in-all, this is extraordinarily poor journalism from the BBC, and something that would never have been tolerated when it was at the height of its reputation. What's really sad is that the latest one-sided reporting of the Android viruses suggests that far from getting better, things are getting even worse in this particular area. That is truly a great loss for not just the BBC but for all of its long-time supporters (like me) who would like to see it flourish in the digital age, not shrivel into irrelevance.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

03 December 2008

The Muddle Kingdom

You would have thought this represented a real opportunity for free software:

Nanchang, the capital of China's eastern Jiangxi province, has required Internet cafe operators to replace pirated server software with licensed versions. Cafes that don't will lose their license to operate, but some are grumbling about the cost of installing legitimate software.

...

"We recommend the use of Red Flag Linux server operating system or Microsoft Windows Server operating system," said the directive issued by Nanchang's Cultural Department on Oct. 22.


But even against this apparently favourably background, things are not all sweet and lightness:

As part of Nanchang's crackdown on pirated software, officials apparently struck a deal with a local Red Flag Linux distributor to install licensed software and provide two years of support for 5,000 yuan (US$725).


Which seems steep. No wonder, then, that:

Some Internet cafe owners were unhappy with the fee, and complained they are prevented from using other Linux distributions.

"You have to install Red Flag Linux, and pay 5,000 yuan," complained one user on the Jiangxi discussion forum (in Chinese). "If you are using a different Linux distribution, they just say it's pirated!"

Someone hasn't quite got the hang of this free software stuff, apparently.