http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9054502 

By Gregg Keizer
December 28, 2007 
Computerworld

One in five applications installed on Windows PCs are missing security 
patches, a Copenhagen-based vulnerability tracker has reported.

According to Secunia APS, more than 20% of the applications scanned by 
its Personal Software Inspector (PSI) utility were open to attack 
because available fixes for security flaws had not been applied.

"More than 20% of all applications installed on users' PCs have known 
security flaws, but the users have yet to install the patch provided by 
the vendor of [the] product," said Jakob Balle, Secunia's development 
manager, in a post to the company's blog last week.

The 20% figure was based on scans of more than 14.5 million applications 
installed on the Windows PCs operated by users who downloaded and 
installed Secunia's PSI. The utility scans for some 4,200 different 
applications and reports on their patch status.

The 1-in-5 ratio, however, is an improvement over earlier PSI scans. 
Last May, Secunia said that 28% of the applications PSI scanned were 
missing available security updates.

Secunia released the free patch-detection utility a year ago but shifted 
it to Release Candidate 1 (RC1) stage earlier this month. The company 
claimed that nearly 191,000 users have downloaded and run the program.

PSI, which runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Server 2003, can be 
downloaded from Secunia's Web site.


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