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Patchy Windows patching leaves users insecure

Third-party patch treadmill running too fast, warns security firm

Windows users need to patch their systems an average of every five days to stay ahead of security vulnerabilities, according to a study this week.

The numbers come from a company called Secunia which just happens to be developing an all-in-one patching tool to reduce update headaches for consumers.

Stats from the two million existing users of Secunia's free Personal Software Inspector tool show the average home user needs an average of 75 patches from 22 different vendors to be fully secure. The complexity of patching means that most users are not even in the race, meaning that hackers hoping to exploit software vulnerabilities to infect vulnerable systems stay well ahead of the game.

Matters are further complicated by the variety of different update mechanisms applied by differing suppliers.

Thomas Kristensen, chief security officer at Secunia, explained: "The core of this patching issue is that the software industry has, so far, failed to come up with a unified patching solution that can help home users on a large scale; that is, encompassing all software programs."

Secunia is working on porting technology from its Corporate Software Inspector (CSI), which has been integrated with Microsoft's corporate patching tools since January 2010, to its home user-focused PSI technology. This will allow the technology to offer automatic updating features currently absent in Secunia PSI 1.5.0.1, the latest version of its consumer patching aid tool.

The proposed tool, Secunia PSI 2.0, would have expert and amateur running modes.

"We will offer different configurations which can range from a 'click on every program to approve patching' to 'install automatically and don't tell me,'" Kristensen told El Reg.

Secunia hopes to cover 60 per cent of third-party vendors products at launch, a figure it hopes to increase over time. It wants to reduce if not eliminate security update chores, such as the need to manually uninstall older version of patched programs, a problem that sometimes crops up with Adobe updates in particular.

"We will do whatever we can do to avoid manual actions," Kristensen added.

A new research paper, Security Exposure of Software Portfolios, which explains the patching pain issue and Secunia's approach to soothing discomfort in greater depth, can be found here (pdf). ®

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