Revisiting Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector

Summary: Secunia released a public beta of its Personal Software Inspector tool for Windows, adding an auto-update feature that can automatically apply patches for a growing list of widely-used programs. Secunia said the average PC user needs to install a security update roughly every five days to safely run Windows and the third-party programs on top of it, and on the author's test installation PSI 2.0 beta auto-updated 10 applications, including Adobe AIR, Flash Player, Foxit, Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, Pidgin, Skype, Java and xChat, without unwanted add-ons or toolbars.
Why it matters: The tool's own design undercuts least privilege: PSI must run with administrator rights, so users either run it in an admin account or run it manually on an admin account periodically, and the author notes PSI protects against vulnerabilities with patches while exposing the machine to those without them whenever it runs as admin.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics: Vulnerabilities & Patching
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