Secunia Unveils the Software Inspector

Secunia Unveils the Software Inspector

How vulnerable is your computer? Do you have the latest patches and upgrades for your programs? Is your browser uptodate? How about your media player? Use the Secunia Software Inspector to find out! Just open your browser to http://secunia.com/software_inspector

“The Secunia Software Inspector is the first application of its kind. And it is an absolutely free, specially designed application that can detect what software you have on your computer, if you have the latest available version for that software, and if not, how you can upgrade to the latest version” says Niels Henrik Rasmussen CEO of Secunia.

As a computer user, you are always reminded that vulnerabilities exist in the programs that you use; vulnerabilities that can potentially result in lost data, program failure, or even criminal activities, like computer access by unauthorized users, phishing attacks, or information theft.

Out of the many programs that you have on your computer, chances are some of these have programming flaws that can be exploited. We use Internet browsers to surf the web, perform online banking transactions, and do some online shopping. And often we aren’t aware of the many ways that criminals use weaknesses in these browsers to steal our account numbers or buy items off of our eshopping accounts.

Even the operating system you use can have vulnerabilities, with effects ranging from an annoying error that appears every time you try to use a certain service, to your computer crashing every time you start it up, rendering it practically unusable, to unknowingly giving a remote attacker complete control of your system.

That is why software companies always stress that users should upgrade to the latest secure version of their programs. Upgrading to a secure version ensures that you are protected against currentlyknown software problems, and are protected against currentlyknown attack vectors from webbased criminals.

But with the dozens of programs you have on your computer, trying to keep up with each upgrade is practically impossible. To do so would require you to spend a lot of time checking vendor websites and surfing the Internet for news on software vulnerabilities, and obviously this just isn’t very feasible. And that’s where the Secunia Software Inspector comes in handy. What takes you several hours on the net will only take the Software Inspector a few seconds to do.

To ensure that the Secunia Software Inspector is useful for you, it detects the most popular software from the following categories:

. Internet browsers
. Internet browser plugins
. Instant Messaging clients
. Email clients
. Media players
. Windows updates

To detect what software you have on your computer, Secunia uses its File Signature technology, which is composed of carefully programmed rules used to identify installed applications, and their exact versions on Windowsbased systems.

To detect if your software version is the latest nonvulnerable version available from the vendor, the Software Inspector uses Secunia Advisory Intelligence technology, which Secunia has been providing to the global IT community for over four years.

Use of the Secunia Software Inspector is absolutely free. In addition, users who sign up for the Referral Programme are allowed access to additional data on Software Inspector statistics, such as the most popular software, or upgrade figures for a certain product.

Users are also encouraged to spread word of the Secunia Software Inspector on their websites – after all, it was designed with the primary goal of emphasizing how important it is to make sure that you run secure software on your computers. To know more about Secunia and our solutions for open communities and the media, please go to http://secunia.com.

Secunia’s commercial services include vulnerability advisories and analysis, exploit code, binary analysis, and file signatures. The complete Secunia File Signature database contains more than 100,000 rules for detecting more than 4,000 unique applications and their exact versions. To know more about the services that Secunia can provide for you and your company, please go to http://corporate.secunia.com.

Secunia Software Inspector

http://secunia.com/software_inspector

Minimum requirements:

Windows 2000, Server 2003, or XP; Sun Java JRE 1.5.0_06 or later; Internet Explorer 6.x, Firefox 1.5.x, or Opera 9.x; Latest version of Microsoft Windows Update

Press Contact Information:
Thomas Kristensen,
CTO
pr {at} secunia(.)com
Phone: +45 7020 5144
Fax: +45 7020 5145