What is it about Windows that makes this a problem where macOS and Linux seem to be fine? The same mechanisms exist in all three major operating systems, which is to say that technically any executable I choose to run on my computer can load a file and interpret it.
Is it really just that Windows users download and run random junk? It's been so long that I've seen a virus of any kind anywhere at all that I genuinely have no clue how people become infected with them or indeed whether it still really happens at all.
It certainly feels to me that the era of random toolbars and clearly visible desktop malware is over, but at the same time I live in a different bubble than in the past.
It's possible you don't see random toolbars and malware now because Defender works. Microsoft could be smarter and offer default exclusions for some things.
But even file type that you think it is pretty safe (jpg, wav and some other media foramt) can abuse parser bug in viewers / explore.exe to result in code execution. And how do you prevent the malware just name its .js as .jpg and execute it with some interpreter? Some interpreters definitively don't care about file extensions.
> I genuinely have no clue how people become infected with them or indeed whether it still really happens at all.
I'm a bit late to the conversation, but can confirm that yes, people do still get infected.
We almost always turn something up while doing virus scans at the repair shop I work at, and we mostly use off the shelf products, along with a couple other tricks.
