BSA loves irony, disproves link between piracy and malware

Posted by admin

October 17, 2009

I know, sometimes it’s hard to believe that the “BS” in BSA stands for business software when they publish reports like the one Wired shared with us this week. Entitled Software Piracy on the Internet: A Threat to Your Security, the BSA’s latest tour de force is fine example of propaganda gone wrong.

Wired highlights this quote from the report: “Globally, there is a significant evidence to link software piracy with the frequency of malware attacks. While this correlation has not been measured with precision, the evidence from industry sources suggests that markets with high software piracy rates also have a tendency to experience high rates of malware infection….”

Not measured with precision? Adam and Jamie would call this thing busted on that point alone.

What the hell, fellas. In addition to your own admission that you weren’t particularly careful in how you calculated your figures you obviously didn’t look too closely at your charts.

What the BSA refers to as a “high” rate of malware infection doesn’t jive. The three biggest offenders on this list - Russia, Turkey, and Brazil - all have malware infection rates of around 20%. So 70 of 100 Russians pirate software, but only 20 of 100 are infected? To me, that actually seems low.

The report highlights the Conficker worm, which according to Symantec spread much more rapidly in areas with a high incidence of piracy. Could that possibly have had anything to do with non-WGA compliant Windows users who didn’t want to run the updates that would have patched the vulnerability? Nice work, Symantec. Columbo would be proud.

Here’s another figure that will leave you gobsmacked: 8% of “software piracy websites” offer malicious or potentially unwanted software. Not only does 8 sites in 100 sound remarkably low to me, the statement ignores some rather important facts.

For example, that legitimate sites - the New York Times, for example - have served up malware to their users (albeit unwittingly). Twitter is being used heavily by malware fiends to push poisoned links - reaching an audience far greater than what most piracy sites do. Heck, a huge number of the systems I clean have gotten infected via malicious links on Facebook.

As for “unwanted software,” the BSA may want to talk to Apple (iPhone configuration tool) and Microsoft (Firefox .Net plugin) about that topic.

Despite the title, the 28-page report only contains about three pages actually discussing the link between malware and piracy. The rest of the report includes the usual financial loss horror stories and plenty of chest-puffing by the BSA about their legal conquests.

Check it out via this link from Wired, and share your thoughts in the comments!

[via:downloadsquad]

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