Data released today by Microsoft showed that Windows 7's malware infection rate climbed by more than 30% during the second half of 2010, even as the infection rate of the 10-year-old Windows XP fell by more than 20%.



From Computerworld:

The infection rates were tabulated from scans conducted by the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), a free utility updated monthly and pushed to Windows users via Microsoft's update services. MSFT detects and deletes selected malware, including fake antivirus programs, worms, viruses and bot Trojans.

Microsoft presented the newest infection numbers as part of its semi-annual security intelligence report, which it published today. The company normalized the data by comparing an equal number of computers for each edition of Windows.

  Windows 7's malware infection rate climbs, XP's falls