Security News > 2021 > October > Google's VirusTotal reports that 95% of ransomware spotted targets Windows
Google's VirusTotal service showing that 95 per cent of ransomware malware identified by its systems targets Windows.
What systems are most attacked? 93.28 per cent of ransomware detected were Windows executables, and 2 per cent Windows DLLs, the report said.
"This is not a surprise most of this malware is meant for Windows Systems," said Diaz.
The Windows printing system has proven to be an escalation of privilege vulnerability, for example, and although it can be mitigated Microsoft has not fixed it completely and some administrators have struggled to follow best practice without breaking functionality.
Why is Windows so prominent? There are several factors, including massive market share and ubiquity, the value of the targets, and the fact that legacy code in Microsoft's operating system is hard to secure.
When Microsoft has tried to establish more locked-down editions of Windows though, such as Windows RT and Windows S, it has met resistance from users unable to run the software they need.
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