The show goes on
  ITPro

Sophos loaded a retail release copy of Windows 7 onto a clean PC, configured it to the system default as far as the User Account Control process was concerned, and failed to install any anti-virus software. OK, so this might be a little unfair you would think, but it does represent the actions of many a person new to the new OS. Microsoft insists it is the most secure version of Windows yet, and ‘ordinary users’ will take the company at its word.

What Sophos did next was less typical, instead of connecting the machine to the Internet and clicking every link under the sun until it was infected up the wazoo, it instead “grabbed the next 10 unique samples that arrived in the SophosLabs feed to see how well the newer, more secure version of Windows and UAC held up” says researcher Chet Wisniewski.

Unsurprisingly, Windows 7 didn’t do too well in fighting off these new threats. Indeed, it only managed to prevent 2 out of those 10 from operating correctly. Wisniewski insists that this just goes to show that his pre-launch warning that the UAC is not fit to protect a PC from malware was indeed correct.