A new study says malware found in pirated software is likely to have a massive impact on the time and money of consumers and enterprises in the near future. The study further says computer users will spend 1.5 billion hours and $22 billion on determining, repairing and recovering from the impact of malware. Global enterprises will too bear similar impact as they are expected to spend some $114 billion on the measures to deal with malware.

The observations and predictions were made by a joint Microsoft and IDC report titled 'The Dangerous World of Counterfeit and Pirated Software'. The report also investigates the prevalence of malicious code and unwanted software — such as viruses, Trojan horses, keystroke-capturing software, authentication backdoors, and spyware — in pirated software, web sites, and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

The study uses information from a 10-country survey of 1,104 consumer respondents, 973 business user respondents, and 268 CIO/IT manager respondents. In this report, the term “pirated software" refers to software that is improperly licensed or not licensed at all whereas "counterfeit software" refers to a subset of pirated software that is deliberately presented as genuine when it is not.

The IDC had performed a similar but a limited study in 2006. The research firm points out some major changes between now and then.

"The best way to secure yourself and your property from these malware threats when you buy a computer is to demand genuine software.”