According to statistics gathered by Secunia's Personal Software Inspector

Jun 25, 2009 13:32 GMT  ·  By
Secunia claims US Internet users have over 2.7 billion vulnerable programs installed on their computers
   Secunia claims US Internet users have over 2.7 billion vulnerable programs installed on their computers

Reputed Danish vulnerability intelligence provider Secunia has recently released version 1.5 of its free Personal Software Inspector (PSI) application. Statistics gathered by the software reveal frightening numbers, such as 2,720,800,000 vulnerable programs being installed on U.S. computers.

Secunia PSI is a free application that scans the programs installed on a computer in order to determine if they are affected by any security vulnerabilities. In order to make this assessment, PSI queries the company's database of security advisories, one of the most complete in the world.

If an application is found to be vulnerable, PSI verifies if any update or newer version that might fix the issue is available and provides the user with a direct download link to it. The tool also tags programs that reached their end of life and are no longer supported by their developers, as a security risk.

According to Secunia, there is an estimated number of 227 million Internet users in the United States, out of which about 400,000 have scanned their computers with PSI. The company notes that PSI users currently have an average of four unpatched programs installed, while the average US Internet users have 12 such applications on their computers.

"The fact that US based PC users have more than 2.7 billion vulnerable programs installed are shocking! And quite frankly I am very surprised, we had an idea it would be bad, but couldn't imagine the enormous scope of this problem. And to make things even worse, the picture formed in the US is the same all over the world," Mikkel Winther, manager of Secunia's PSI Partner Program, noted.

Secunia's statistics seem to be consistent with the malware distribution trends observed in recent times. Cyber-criminals have come to rely more and more on vulnerabilities in order to infect computers. And not just the ones affecting the Windows operating system itself, but other popular programs as well, such as Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, PowerPoint, Word, and so on.

"PC users need to patch! They need to patch all their vulnerable programs and they need to do so as fast as possible after the patch has been issued from the vendor. Failing to do so is playing Russian Roulette with your IT security – it is only a question about time – and luck – when your system will be compromised," Mr. Winther advised.

The latest version of Secunia PSI can be downloaded from here.