The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Unauthorised apps bigger threat than malware

Chart ranks enemies within

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Mozilla's Firefox 1.0.7 has taken top spot in a list of vulnerable applications likely to be lurking in corporate IT systems released by Bit9.

The endpoint security vendor contends that malware is less of a threat to companies than unpatched off-the-shelf applications deployed throughout their organisations.

Firefox 1.0.7 is number one on its list, with vulnerabilities including "memory corruptions, buffer overflows, and running of arbitrary HTML and Javascript code that in many cases allow the execution of arbitrary code".

Apple's iTunes 6.0.2 and Quicktime 7.0.3 come second, with Skype Internet Phone 1.4 third, Acrobat Reader 7.02/6.03 fourth, and Sun's Java Run-Time Environment 5.0 rounding out the top five.

Security hounds may be surprised that Microsoft doesn't make an appearance till number nine, with Microsoft Windows/MSN messenger 5.0. Then again, Microsoft's software could be a bit more widespread than anything else in the top 15.

It should be said that Bit9 doesn't make it clear if it has ranked the apps by their popularity or their level of vulnerability.

Bit9 says companies should take a hard line against unauthorised apps, and should completely disable them, rather than simply blocking them. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

More from The Register

 breaking news
NSA PRISM snoop-gate: Won't someone think of the children, wails Apple
10,000 things probed, mostly about missing kids, Alzheimer patients, we're told
 breaking news
NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron
Whatever they are up to, it's all above board, we're told
PRISM snitch claims NSA hacked Chinese targets since 2009
Snowden suddenly looks safer in Hong Kong after revelations
 breaking news
US chief spook: Look, we only want to spy on 6.66 BEELLLION of you
Americans assured they are not in the NSA's sights
Speech-to-text drives motorists to distraction
Will talking to you mean I crash into that car up ahead, Siri?
DHS warns of vulns in hospital medical equipment
Has your doctor's anasthesia machine been hacked?
 breaking news
'BadNews is malware' says outfit that found it
Google says code harmless but Lookout says code base is evolving
Panda-peddlers cuffed for chess gambling gambit
More porridge on the menu for Chinese coders after second offence
 breaking news
Yes, maybe we should keep hackers in the clink for YEARS, mulls EU
Watch out black hats, they just might throw away the key
Internet fraud still stings suckers
Australians twice as gullible as Americans