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Bit9, Inc., the pioneer and leader in Enterprise Application Whitelisting, unveiled its annual ranking of popular consumer applications with known security vulnerabilities. Often running outside of the IT department’s knowledge or control, these applications can be difficult to detect; they create data leakage risk in endpoints that are otherwise secure; and cause compliance breaches that can result in costly fines. The list, published in a research brief entitled “2008’s Popular Applications with Critical Vulnerabilities,” is designed to highlight the need for greater visibility and control over organizations’ endpoints, including laptops, PCs servers and Point-of-Sale systems.

each application on the list has the following characteristics:

• Runs on Microsoft Windows.
• Is well-known in the consumer space and frequently downloaded by individuals.
• Is not classified as malicious by enterprise IT organizations or security vendors.
• Contains at least one critical vulnerability that was:
o first reported in January 2008 or after,
o registered in the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) official vulnerability database at »nvd.nist.gov, and given a severity rating of high (between 7.0-10.0) on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

["The biggies"]

• Relies on the end user, rather than a central IT administrator, to manually patch or upgrade the software to eliminate the vulnerability, if such a patch exists.

• The application cannot be automatically and centrally updated via free Enterprise tools such as Microsoft SMS & WSUS.

To read the full list of applications, which includes products from Symantec, Yahoo!, Trend Micro, Sun Microsystems and more, download the research report at: »bit9.com/landing/2008vulnerableapps.php. There, IT managers can learn more about the application vulnerabilities, along with the benefits of using application white listing, a proactive approach to endpoint security.

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Bit9 is the pioneer and leader in Enterprise Application Whitelisting. The company's patented solutions ensure only trusted and authorized applications are allowed to run on Windows computers, eliminating the risk caused by malicious, illegal and unauthorized software.

Bit9 is privately held and based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

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said by Frodo :

The Register also had an article abount this matter.
»www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/12···at_list/

said by The Register :

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Daft list names Firefox, Adobe and VMWare as top threats[now we know where matunga got the original thread title (dictionary def. - daft: 1. Mad; crazy. 2. Foolish; stupid.)]

Bit9 trolls for publicity

Vulnerable applications that fail to lend themselves to updating through corporate tools are creating a security gap, according to a ludicrous list from whitelisting firm Bit9.

Bit9's list of "threats in plain sight" names Firefox at the top of a "Dirty Dozen", essentially because it's both popular and has been the subject of critical vulnerabilities over the last year. Firefox and many of the other applications listed, including iTunes and Acrobat, do have auto-updating features, though that's not obvious from what Bit9 says.

True, as the little-known Bit9 suggests, many of these applications are infrequently updated, but to go on to suggest that they are akin to more inappropriate applications such as P2P file sharing programs and the like is a bit much. Throwing VMWare and Symantec into the list is just plain silly. And when Bit9 releases its report in PDF format while implying Acrobat is an "under the radar" security threat, you really have to wonder what's going on.

"Often running outside of the IT department’s knowledge or control, these applications can be difficult to detect; they create data leakage risk in endpoints that are otherwise secure; and cause compliance breaches that can result in costly fines," Bit9 said (our emphasis).

We've emailed the firm challenging it to come up with evidence of any organisation fined for using iTunes or Firefox, no word yet.

Bit9 said its research is designed to "highlight the need for greater visibility and control over organizations’ endpoints, including laptops, PCs servers and Point-of-Sale systems". End-point protection, preventing malware infection and keeping patches up to date on clients, is a key topic in information security but to overplay the significance of users installing Yahoo! on their machines contributes little to the debate.

Bit9's research report (pdf, registration required) list the "Dirty Dozen" applications as below (actually a list of software developers, like Apple and Symantec, not applications at all).

01. Mozilla Firefox
02. Adobe Flash & Acrobat
03. EMC VMware Player, Workstation and other products
04. Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
05. Apple QuickTime, Safari & iTunes
06. Symantec
07. Trend Micro
08. Citrix Products
09. Aurigma, Lycos
10. Skype
11. Yahoo! Assistant
12. Microsoft Windows Live (MSN) Messenger

The list only covers Windows apps popular with consumers (so how does Citrix get in the list?), that had a critical vulnerability over the last year, and rely on end users to update, as explained in Bit9's flame-baiting press release here.

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