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A Secunia report indicates that Apple has gone from Oracle in the total number of security vulnerabilities in software self-report in Windows XP and Vista products, such as iTunes and Safari. The report does not rank the companies by the severity of vulnerabilities, only the number, so this does not mean that Apple’s software is the highest risk – other sources suggest Adobe Reader may be the most dangerous. The report highlights the lack of improvements made by the software industry as a whole and the difficulties faced by IT managers and consumers to keep the software patched.
The top ten applications of third parties, classified by the total number of reported vulnerabilities:
1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Apple Safari
3. Sun Java JRE
4. Google Chrome
5. Adobe Reader
6. Adobe Acrobat
7. Adobe Flash Player
8. Adobe AIR
9. Apple iTunes
10. Mozilla Thunderbird
Apple has always come in higher than Microsoft, but this is the first year Secunia began to detect vulnerabilities that Apple has achieved Oracle. We previously reported that Apple is stepping up its anti-malware capabilities in OSX.
According to F-Secure, Adobe Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Word were the most commonly attacked applications in 2009. Others report that exploits Reader are on the rise in 2010. This week, Adobe announced it will launch “sandbox” to make safer Reader.
According to the report, a typical user has more than 66 programs in more than 22 different manufacturers installed. According to the report, third party software is being increasingly affected, but most vendors do not do automatic updates – that let end users. “It seems that most vendors do not make sign cant steps to ensure its users and active before the operation is performed on a larger scale where it starts to endanger the overall reputation of the company,” says the report.
Secunia plans to update its free Secunia PSI tool to update the software personal reality and not just a search for potentially vulnerable software. Meanwhile, IT managers should take account of enterprise solutions for managing patches. Patch management is one of the activities more time-consuming and tedious to IT security, but companies should make the third party software patch a high priority.