One-Third of PC Users Blame Microsoft for Zotob Attacks, Poll Finds

A new poll of British PC users found that almost as many people are blaming Microsoft for last week’s high-profile virus attacks as there are people blaming the hackers who wrote the bots.

According to an article on the TechWeb News website, the Sophos survey found that 35 percent of respondents blame Microsoft for the attacks, while 45 percent hold the bot writers responsible. Twenty percent of respondents said system administrators were at fault for not getting out patches fast enough.

The article, however, points out that Microsoft did indeed release a patch for the vulnerability before the attack.

“What's most surprising is that so many people blame Microsoft for having the software flaw in the first place,” Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with Sophos, said in a statement. "Users" anger is perhaps understandable…many respondents appear to be incredibly frustrated by the constant need to roll-out emergency patches across their organizations.”

Cluley also added that “Microsoft is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to vulnerabilities. When it goes public about its security holes, a virus can be written to exploit them and many businesses may not have rolled out the patch. If it kept quiet, someone could still write a virus and everyone would ask why Microsoft hadn't warned anyone of the vulnerability.”

To read the full article, click here: www.techweb.com/wire/security/169400184