An experiment showing what happens if you expose computers with out-of-the-box Operating Systems to the internet
The company StillSecure, a Louisville network security firm, used the "honey pot" method: attach a PC to the net and see what happens. The six PC's had operating systems going from Linux over Apple to Windows XP (sp1 and 2).
The results? After only one week the six PC's got scanned 46,255 times and 4,892 actual direct attacks occured (worms, Trojan Horses, viruses, spyware, etc).
The most interesting part? Of those 4,892 attacks, 4,857 of them went to one machine: the Windows XP SP1. A lousy 18 minutes (!) after launch the SP1 caught blaster and sasser worms, after 1 hour it became a bot itself.
The good news? All other machines (including XP SP2) stepped up to the challenge, none got infected.
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