Buy a PC at Best Buy today and plug it in - how long till I get a virus?

From: BeamGuy (nobody_at_spam.com)
Date: 05/02/04 

Date: Sun, 2 May 2004 00:59:56 -0400

Here is a hypothetical question... If I were to go down to best buy and
buy a PC today, take it home, unbox it and plug it in how long would it
take before a virus found it's way to my computer?

Lets assume it has a virus scanner included from the manufacturer, but it
has been in the box for 3 months so the virus definitions are out of date.
It clearly won't be sitting there polling constantly for an internet connection,
mine takes maybe 10 minutes after I have reboot to determine that there is
an internet connection and download the patches.... If it is a 28K modem
connection it could take quite some time to download the whole upgrade,
I could be without virus protection for maybe 30 minutes or more even if
I am on the ball and the vendor provided virus protection in the box.

And for system patches - lets assume I have read the news, know that my
system is wide open for exploitation as soon as it is plugged into the internet and
immediately start downloading the system patches. With broadband I might
be lucky enough to finish patching the system before a virus strikes, but these
days I am getting hundreds of hits an hour on my firewall mostly from viruses.
It is more likely that my system will be compromised before I can patch it,
even if I am on the ball and do the right thing and upgrade immediately instead
of fooling around browing the web.

--------------------

Did I miss something, or is everyone who takes home a computer tommorrow
with a dialup modem going to have a virus on their machine within 10 minutes
of plugging it in? And those with high speed internet will suffer the same unless
they have a firewall router and read the manual in advance to turn the firewall
on.

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