By the end of 2014 we are likely to see the biggest increase in the number of software vulnerabilities in at least the past five years, according to new stats from Danish security specialist Secunia.
The firm today released a new Vulnerability Update report covering August-October 2014. It predicted that by the end of the year we would see an increase from 2013 of around 40% in discovered vulnerabilities.
“The increase is here to stay, and we will most likely also see an increase again next year,” director of research and security, Kasper Lindgaard, told Infosecurity.
“The year is not over yet, but it definitely looks like this year’s increase is bigger compared to last year – and when compared to the trend of the past five years, it is the biggest increase we have seen.”
However, this rise in vulnerabilities isn’t necessarily a bad thing, he argued.
“In fact, it could also be a sign of increased security maturity – if, for example, the reason is that a vendor has launched internal programs to discover and patch vulnerabilities in products before an external researcher or hacker does so,” said Lindgaard.
Two vendors which didn’t come out of the report well are IBM and Google.
Big Blue was named as the firm responsible for most vulnerable products over the three month period, while Google Chrome was the product with the most vulnerabilities.
IBM’s problem is that it likes to bundle products with vulnerable third-party software like Java or OpenSSL.
It means that every time a new vulnerability is discovered and a patch released it must be applied by IBM to the corresponding product and then by its customers – a very time consuming process, said Secunia.
“It is important to state that the numbers from IBM are not especially higher in this period, compared to any other period,” explained Lindgaard by email.
“What you need to do as a customer/user, is to make sure that your organization’s gathering of vulnerability intelligence is up to par, and that you have the policies and procedures in place to efficiently patch your applications as soon as security patches are made available, or to take other mitigating actions if applicable.”
The total number of vulnerabilities in the 'Top 20' during August-October 2014 – that is, the 20 products with the most vulnerabilities – was 1,841.