80% of Browsers Found To Be At Risk of Attack

CWmike writes "About eight out of every 10 Web browsers run by consumers are vulnerable to attack by exploits of already-patched bugs, a security expert said Thursday. The poor state of browser patching stunned Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, which presented data from the company's free BrowserCheck service Wednesday at RSA. 'I really thought it would be lower,' Kandek said. BrowserCheck scans Windows, Mac and Linux machines for vulnerable browsers, as well as up to 18 browser plug-ins, from Adobe's Flash to Windows Media Player. When browsers and plug-ins are tabulated together, between 90% and 65% of all consumer systems scanned with BrowserCheck since June 2010 reported at least one out-of-date component. In January 2011, about 80% of the machines were vulnerable. The most likely plug-in to require a patch: same as last year, Oracle's Java."

Comments

Re:I would have thought this closer to 100%

[theaveng]

I'm one of those who doesn't do updates. Mainly because I've read too many horror stories of updates making computers unbootable, or breaking the software, or whatever.

Instead I wait a month-or-so until I'm sure there's no negative outcomes being reported by the press.

I'm not surprised. The only thing worse than your Stupidity is your Shitty Grammar. Do us all a favor and just shut the hell up

You're too lazy to bother taking five minutes to understand what you're reading, or to put it into any sort of context. Which also explains why you keep making so many factually incorrect statements (about the law, banking, retailing, etc) that you could simply look up and accurately understand if you were so busy watching sitting on the couch watching ripped off entertainment and lamely trying to excuse it away by pretending that you, and only you, have good taste. You might be surprised at how transparent you are, seen from outside of your mom's basement. Maybe if you asked her for a bigger allowance, you could actually pay for some of what you're desparately trying to come up with ways to justify rippipng off.

You're just making the mistake of assuming that you're smarter than you actually are, and that we aren't on to you. Which is typical of kids like you. You'll grow out of it.