The number of users with an unpatched Microsoft operating system decreased this year, while more than two-thirds of PC users were found to have an end-of-life version of Adobe Flash Player installed.
According to statistics from Secunia, Adobe Flash Player remains the most insecure program through Q1-Q2 of 2014, based on scans by the Secunia Personal Software Inspector between 1st April and 31st June 2014.
Kasper Lindgaard, director of research and security at Secunia, said: “Version 13 of Adobe Flash Player, which has unpatched vulnerabilities in it, is no longer supported by the vendor Adobe and no longer receives any security updates.
“Private users still have a long way to go when it comes to vulnerability awareness, which means understanding that it is important to apply security patches to vulnerable software programs to protect their PCs and the data on them from hackers.”
Chris Boyd, malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes, said: “These statistics show that we’re still not as efficient as we should be when it comes to patching – 69 per cent of UK PC users still running the old Flash Player 13 is rather alarming and simply serves to make things easier for scammers and purveyors of malicious code.
“Running layered defence tools is always a good idea, but will only take you so far if you’re not doing your bit to keep everything as locked down as possible. As is usually the case, education is the key to addressing these problems but it remains an uphill struggle to work out how to achieve this or even where to begin.”
