Dial up security woes from East Africa
Summary: A Cisco Talos blogger working from a large East African nation found his parents' Windows XP SP3 machine missing Microsoft patches dating back to October 2008, with an antivirus last updated October 8, 2008, even though Automatic Updates was turned on. The country has a single state-owned cellular operator with no data service and a single ISP that bills by the minute, so the 56K connection makes it impractical to download large updates or leave the machine online overnight.
Why it matters: A machine with antivirus definitions frozen since October 2008 is running on a connection billed by the minute, so the cost of patching, not the will to patch, is what leaves it exposed. Security vendors that ship large updates assume broadband that most of the world's users do not have.
Read the original at Cisco Talos ↗
- Topics
- Malware
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