The Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector) is a tool I have just come across and thought might be worth a mention here.
It is free for personal/private use and basically scans your software for versions that are out of date and have vulnerabilities.
You can get it here:
https://psi.secunia.com/
EDIT:
Forgot to mention: it has handy quick links to the solutions, if available.
EDIT 2:
I have now played with this on XP SP3. I now have 99 applications that are running patched versions that are not subject to Secunia advisories.......... previously I had 14 that were not
A couple of things it picked up on were software that was no longer supported and obsolete versions. In the last case Java was the main culprit, as it does not seem to delete previous versions when installing a new one? OK, right now that might not be a big issue, but I don't like the idea of having vulnerable versions of software when I think that I only have the latest, patched one.
Please remember that this is still a Beta(RC3) so we can only hope for improvements. I think that the concept has some merit as it goes towards addressing the problem of attacks at the user applications layer.
We all know how many do not patch their OS and browser, ley alone applications!!!
Incidentally, this also looks at Windows and IE as well
So far, I would say that I am reasonably impressed with the progress that Secunia have made.
Reply With Quote