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Home>Perimeter Scan>Your application software sorely needs updating

Your application software sorely needs updating

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Ryan russell By Ryan Russell

In my July 26 column, I invited readers to use Windows Secrets’ link to test their PCs with Secunia.com’s free Software Inspector.

I’m happy this week to present the results and answer the many questions this generated from our readers.


Results show Web plug-ins are vulnerable

Software Inspector scans your PC (with your permission) and reports on programs, including Windows itself, that have old, nonsecure versions installed on your PC. Through an affiliate relationship with Windows Secrets, we were allowed to see the 10 programs that were the least updated — and therefore the most likely to be nonsecure — among the PCs that were tested by our paid readers.

The link to Software Inspector that I provided in my previous column was clicked more than 12,000 times by readers in the first week alone. We don’t know how many of those visitors went on to run an actual scan of their PCs. (Secunia doesn’t collect or report any personal information, nor would we want the company to.) But a huge number of readers surely took advantage of the free service.

I looked at Secunia’s list of the 10 software products that Windows Secrets readers are running nonupdated versions of. (Software Inspector only tells you about vulnerable software that has a more-secure version available.)

Here’s the list, in descending order, starting with the applications that have the greatest number of flawed, nonupdated instances on readers’ machines (before they ran the scan and, I hope, updated the apps that needed it):

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Related posts:

  1. Test your PC for weak software versions
  2. How to ensure you don’t have vulnerable software on your PC
  3. Free utility identifies which of your programs need updating
  4. Buyer’s guide to upgrade-checking software
  5. A serious warning from Gizmo
= Paid content

All Windows Secrets articles posted on 2007-08-09:

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Ryan Russell

About Ryan Russell

Ryan Russell is a quality assurance manager at BigFix Inc., a configuration management company. He moderated the vuln-dev mailing list for three years under the alias "Blue Boar." He was the lead author of Hack-Proofing Your Network, 2nd Ed., and the technical editor of the Stealing the Network book series.
View all posts by Ryan Russell →
E-books

We’ve pored through years of back issues, picking the best tips, to create these ebooks:

E-book series
  • PC Maintenance Guide
  • PC Security Guide
  • Windows 7 Guide Vol 1
  • Windows 7 Guide Vol 2
  • Win XP Survival Guide
See the e-book series
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