Secunia study finds 98 per cent of PCs vulnerable

98 out of 100 PCs connected to the internet have insecure programs installed

A survey of computer users has shown that almost every PC is running at least one unpatched application, according to vulnerability testing firm Secunia.

Secunia gathered reports from over 20,000 computer users who had downloaded its Personal Software Inspector tool, and found that over 98 per cent have at least one application running that is vulnerable to attack.

The company warned that the results are even more worrying since the tool is likely to have been downloaded predominantly by more security aware computer users.

"Has the world improved since the last look at the numbers? The short answer is no. Nearly every PC continues to run with several insecure programs. If anything, these numbers are worse than [11 months ago] when we generated them initially," said Secunia.

"The total number of PCs/users included in these numbers is 20,000, and 98.09 per cent have one or more insecure programs installed on their PC. Hence 98 out of 100 PCs that are connected to the internet have insecure programs installed. "

Another shocking figure from the research is that nearly 50 per cent of PCs have 11 or more unsecured programs running on their computers.

Secunia warned that antivirus software is largely ineffective at protecting against such vulnerabilities.