Consumers and businesses that choose to use pirated software are running an extremely high risk of malware infection while searching for and downloading it, a new IDC report on behalf of Microsoft has claimed.
According to
The Dangerous world of Counterfeit and Pirated Software, pirated and counterfeit software (i.e. unlicensed software and bogus software pretending to be genuine) has become one of the most reliable fast-tracks to the risk of malware infection.
After running 533 tests of web and P2P pirate sources, IDC discovered that 36 percent led to encounters with Trojans and malicious adware. For pirated DVDs, the rate was around one in five.
