Unpatched PCs survival time diminishing to 18 minutes

The average amount of time an unsecure Internet-connected PC will survive before being infected by malware is plummeting, according to new research.

The Internet Storm Centre, which provides reports and analysis on security issues affecting the Internet, has warned that an unpatched Windows PC connected to the Internet will only last about 18 minutes before succumbing to an attack by a worm. This is markedly down from the average time of 40 minutes estimated by the same researchers last year.

The survival time was calculated as the average time between reports across a number of average target IP addresses monitored by the researchers.

"If you are assuming that most of these reports are generated by worms that attempt to propagate, an unpatched system would be infected by such a probe," a Centre spokesperson said in a statement.

The reduction in the window of opportunity is a concern as the time to download critical patches is not long enough to beat the 'survival time'.

"The average time between probes will vary widely from network to network. Some of our submitters subscribe to ISPs which block ports commonly used by worms. As a result, these submitters report a much longer 'survival time'. On the other hand, university networks and users of high speed Internet services are frequently targeted with additional scans from malware like bots. If you are connected to such a network, your 'survival time' will be much smaller," the report states.

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