Windows 7 is getting more infected than Windows XP

According to the stats provided by Microsoft this week Windows 7’s malware infection rate surged by over 30% during the second half of 2010 while the same figure dropped by more than 20% for Windows XP machines.

"Infection rates have jumped [for Windows 7]," admitted Jeff Williams, the principal group program manager with the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC). "We attribute that to the increased presence of malicious software attacks out there."

Thus, in the second half of 2010 32-bit Windows 7 machines were infected at an average rate of more than 4 PCs per 1,000, a 33% growth over the 3-per-1,000 infection rate during the first half of the year. Meantime, 64-bit version of Windows 7 showed an infection rate of 2.5 per 1,000 during all of 2010.

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 XP was the only one of Microsoft's three desktop editions to see its infection rate drop last year.

The infection rate of Windows XP SP3 -- the spring 2008 upgrade to the aged edition -- fell from a 2010 high of nearly 18 per 1,000 in the first quarter to just over 14 per 1,000 in the fourth quarter, a 22 percent drop.

Windows XP's infection rate decline was responsible for the global drop that Microsoft charted last year. According to its data, the infection rate for all Windows machines fell from a high of 10.8 PCs per 1,000 in the first quarter to 8.7 per 1,000 in the fourth quarter.