95 Of Every 100 Windows PCs Miss Security Updates 126
An anonymous reader writes "From Computerworld today: 'Nearly all Windows computers are likely running at least one unpatched application and about four out of every ten contain 11 or more vulnerable-to-attack programs, a vulnerability tracking company said today.' The new data comes from Secunia's free security-patch scanner the Secunia's PSI. The complete data run-down is available here."
Sounds like like Lunix, OSX (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not shocked (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re-think (Score:0, Insightful)
This kind of data ought to prompt serious developers to drastically re-think the current desktop security paradigm. Whether it's Windows, Mac OS or Linux, the premise is that the software will frequently prove insecure or deficient and regular updates are required. We expect users to OK these updates and wait for them to take place.
Obviously 95% of people aren't doing this, so what do we change to fix that? We need to have some combination of the following:
Personally I think the ideal solution would be to first lock the desktop down. Nothing listens on any ports, ever, unless the user downloads and installs something new. Strip out relatively unused functionality, because it's not worth the security tradeoff. No more Internet Explorers: the specific people responsible for fuck-ups so disastrous and far-reaching ought to be named, shamed, and unemployed. The same goes for the clown responsible for Ubuntu storing the root password in plain-text during installation, if you're concerned about balance.
I know this is all a pipe-dream, and nothing will ever change. What I secretly wish for is for something on the scale of the Storm Worm, only more malicious and destructive. If somebody gives the public something serious, like a computing 9/11... I don't know... Wipe all their stupid mp3s and photos or something. Really drive it home into the public conciousness. Maybe then they'll understand that the internet is serious business. Also I'm drunk, which if Taco had the slightest clue what he was fucking doing in Perl, would mean an automatic +1 Drunk post score bonus. Fuck you Rob, all this fucking JavaScript has ruined Slashdot for me.
Re:Is that... (Score:5, Insightful)
People ignore software update alerts (Score:5, Insightful)
When I look at people's computers these days they have heaps of different software popping up asking for updates, its got to a point where people ignore it, because its much too common.
The thing that annoys me most about update alerts is they never give you a reason why the software should be updated. It would be nice if they would give you a link or a summary of simple reasons why you need to actually update their free crapware.
Java and adobe products are probably the worst with this.
duhhhh.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like like Lunix, OSX (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like like Lunix, OSX (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like like Lunix, OSX (Score:4, Insightful)
Ubuntu users don't get annoyed by the yellow box that pops up about system updates?
You'd think that update systems that get on people nerves would actually make them update...
Updates Slow Computer Down (Score:3, Insightful)
I should be safe ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... Windows Update tells me that the only update I need is "Windows Genuine Advantage", which I don't want, anyway. No other updates needed, since Microsoft told me that WGA wasn't necessary to get security updates... just "new features".
Yeah, right....
You call them security updates (Score:2, Insightful)
Just look at the "fixes" in MS Office 2003 in the last SP.
Those removed the ability to open older spreadsheet formats we still have data stored in, so we had to roll them back.
And most of the fixes were already done when we switched to the more secure Firefox as our default browser and got rid of all Outlook instances.
Re:Sounds like like Lunix, OSX (Score:2, Insightful)