IT security and control firm Sophos is warning businesses of the security and productivity risks of allowing counterfeit software programs to run on their company networks following research from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) that revealed that more than a third of PCs worldwide are running pirated software.

According to the research, 35 per cent of computers run at least one illegal program, with computer users in China and Russia the worst offenders (with over 80 per cent of computers running pirated software). Sophos notes that pirated software can leave business networks open to attack as cybercriminals are provided with an additional route to infection.

"Putting aside the obvious legal issues, piracy can have a real impact on a company in terms of security," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "It's not enough to make sure that all PCs are running legitimate copies of Word, businesses must also control what programs their employees are downloading, installing and running. Patching against software vulnerabilities is key to any good IT security policy, but with pirated software this becomes near impossible. Pirated software downloaded from dodgy websites or bought from a man in an alleyway will not come with technical support, and may even be virus infected."

According to Sophos, running pirated software on corporate networks can also have severe repercussions on the network infrastructure, hogging valuable bandwidth and network resources.

[This is an extremely valid point and a convincing reason why pirated software from external sources should never be allowed to run on a corporate network. Pirating software often involves patching the original software to remove or invalidate e.g. dongle checks. In order for this to work you need to first install the original software, then run a patch program which performs the patching by changing some of the files of the original software. You do not know what this patch program might do beside patching the stolen software. It could very easily install a Trojan, e.g. to steal data such as log-in information, map your corporate network and identify potential vulnerable components, etc.

So, this is reason enough never to run cracked software on a network connected computer!

--Ed].

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
www.sophos.com/
www.bsa.org/usa/press/newsreleases/2007-global-piracy-study.cfm

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