A survey of 20,000 computer systems running Microsoft Windows found
that nearly all ran at least one program with a vulnerability that put
the computer at risk, security firm Secunia said in a brief analysis
published on Wednesday.
The survey, using data from the first week that the company's Personal
Software Inspector was available, found that only 1.9 percent of
Windows systems that ran the utility for the first time had no
out-of-date programs. About a third of the systems ran a vulnerable
version of five or fewer programs, while nearly half of the machines
ran 11 or more insecure applications.
"Close to all PCs continues (sic) to run with several insecure programs
installed," Jakob Balle, the company's information-technology
development manager, wrote in the analysis
posted to the Secunia's blog. "If anything, these numbers are worse now
than (the previous survey 11 months ago) when we generated these
numbers initially."
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/867