09.04.10
Gemini version available ♊︎Microsoft is Ranked the Worst Security Patching Offender
Summary: Despite silent patching (without any disclosure) Microsoft is positioned worst in a new report
MICROSOFT has a habit of hiding the real severity of its security flaws (and numbers). Despite or because of this Microsoft loves to pretend that it is leading among those who patch their software, but IBM’s report suggests otherwise. Microsoft is positioned worst among everyone after some amendments were made:
IBM has overhauled its list of worst security patchers among software vendors, putting Microsoft at the top of its list and shifting Sun from No. 1 to No. 5.
[...]
The corrected ranking for the companies with the most unpatched disclosed vulnerabilities by company name and percent unpatched is: Microsoft, 23%; Mozilla, 17%; Apple, 12%; IBM, 9%; Sun, 8%; Oracle, 6%; Cisco, 6%; Novell, 5%; HP, 4%; Linux, 3%; Adobe, 3%; Google, 0%.
By all means call out Windows. Do now allow Microsoft to get away with the excuse that it’s only targeted “because it’s popular” (meaning ubiquitous in desktops). Microsoft deserves to be treated differently because it’s exceptionally vain and negligent, meaning that it refuses to fix known flaws. Consider the recent example of Internet Explorer [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. █
twitter said,
September 4, 2010 at 8:00 am
The Mozilla might do better if they dropped their Windows ports and so might software freedom. Ten years ago, free software ports to Windows proved to everyone that free software worked and was excellent but they have always been plagued by Microsoft sabotage and they still give a false endorsement. It is time to leave the uncooperative OS owners to their own devices. Time spent fixing Windows problems is better spent making a better piece of software.