Last week, Vista had been put to the test against other versions of Windows to see how it stacked up in the security department. The results were unfavorable, with the OS coming about neck and neck with Windows 2000. Microsoft denied that claim, but now they will have an even bigger claim to deny with more information regarding Vista's security. Now it seems that Vista is not terribly robust in protecting the user from malware, with around 27% of the sample machines falling victim to an attack.
The report does not mention specifically what malware the machines ended up getting infected with, only that 58,000 of around 190,000 total Vista machines were vulnerable. It isn't mentioned if the machines were also not fully updated, though with Automatic Updates being a stock addition to Windows for quite some time it seems unlikely that scores of unpatched Vista machines are wandering the net. It seems more likely that the cause of compromise was due to an out of date anti-virus or Internet security suite, though that is just speculation. If these figures hold any grain of truth, then Microsoft's claims of Vista being any more secure than XP or 2000 aren't holding any water.