On October 14, a Pennsylvanian corporation that assists in funding cost-effective properties had a firsthand look at the dangers of Internet banking while using a Microsoft Windows operating system after their account was breached and nearly bled dry by a particularly harmful trojan. They've lost almost $480,000 because of this insidious malware.

The amount of $479,247 had been stolen from the Cumberland County Redevelopment Authority's online bank account after their PC was infected by the Clampi malware. This trojan infects computers by duping users into clicking a file attachment on an email message. It then prowls in wait for the victim to login to any of the major online banking sites available before striking and pilfering thousands of dollars in virtual cash.

Authorities investigating the case have been able to recover about $109,467 of the embezzled cash so far. The incident is indicative of a series of Internet heists that have appropriated millions of dollars from non-profit organizations and businesses. Even though the circumstances surrounding the events are in a varied, case-to-case basis, they all feature a single weak point: Each scam was perpetrated via a successful exploit of a woefully corruptible Windows-based operating system.

It's this irrefutable truth that compelled Brian Krebs (the Security Fix blog's author that has been publishing a whole series of articles discussing major online bank scams for the past month) to advise people to halt using Windows machines whenever they do their financial and bank-related activities over the Internet.

He also recommends people to not take his anti-Windows stance lightly. He wrote on his blog that dozens of victimized organizations (that lost anywhere between ten thousand to five hundred thousand dollars because of one simple malware infection) were all using the Windows platform at the time they were robbed. The more damning proof is the fact that the Clampi trojans were the type of malware that ran only on Windows.

Two proposed solutions for the Clampi menace involve shifting to a new platform (either Mac or Linux) or closing all of your online accounts outright so that you won't have to be bothered by this dilemma anymore. Indeed, considering the alternative, writing checks, waiting in lines, and dealing with cashiers isn't as much a hassle to you as your banks would allege.