14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is paying much more attention to security flaws these days, so the company is trying to patch them as soon as possible.
And a new research conducted by the Redmond-based tech giant comes to confirm that the company is heading in the right direction.
Most vulnerabilities are exploited only after the company rolls out a security update, which means that users are already on the safe side when hackers attempt to break into their computers.
“Vulnerabilities are most often exploited only after a security update is available, although recent years have shown an upward trend in the percentage of vulnerabilities that are exploited before a security update is available,” Microsoft said in the research papers.
At the same time, the number of remote code execution vulnerabilities which would allow an attack to get full control of an unpatched system is said to be decreasing every year.
“Stack corruption vulnerabilities were historically the most commonly exploited vulnerability class, but now they are rarely exploited. The use of stack corruption vulnerabilities declined between 2006 and 2012 from 43% of exploited vulnerabilities to 7%,” the study shows.
Microsoft is trying to adopt a rapid release cycle not only for new products, but also for patches, so the company has launched no less than 739 security updates for Windows 8 and Windows RT in just six months after the public debut of the two operating systems.
These figures have been provided by Microsoft’s CFO Tami Reller who also said that the company had rolled out on average 123 patches for the two platforms, in an attempt to bring out improvements for battery, drivers, and stability.
