A study of the prevalence of malicious code and potentially unwanted software in pirated software.
5 percent of the Web sites we accessed offering counterfeit product keys, pirated software, key generators or crack tools attempted to install either malicious software or potentially unwanted software. A significant number of these Web sites attempted to install malicious or unwanted code.
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- 11 percent of the key generators and crack tools downloaded from Web sites contained either malicious or potentially unwanted software.
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- 59 percent of the key generators and crack tools downloaded from peer-to-peer networks contained either malicious software or potentially unwanted software. A significant amount of malicious or unwanted code was present in the key generators and crack tools.
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- The cost of recovering from an incident of malicious software on a single workstation could exceed one thousand dollars (USD). The cost of lost or compromised data could exceed tens of thousands of dollars (USD) per incident. Thus, the cost savings of using pirated software could be eradicated with a single security breach.
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