It’s that time of year again: the time at which all sorts of organizations put together lists naming the best and worst things they’ve seen over the past 12 months. Below, you’ll find out what Forbes and iDefense determined to be very much in the “worst” category, as they got together to name “The Year’s Most-Hacked Software.”
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| 2009’s “Most-Hacked Software” Named |
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The big non-award goes to Adobe Reader. A whopping 45 bugs were found in it, which obviously isn’t great, averaging out to about one per week. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer came in second place with a better – but still not good – 30 bugs.
Next up is what may be a more surprising pick in the form of Mozilla Firefox. It was plagued by 102 bugs. Just don’t try to perform an apples-to-apples comparison with other contenders, since the open source nature of Firefox means that all of its issues are discussed in public.
Then we go back to Adobe with Adobe Flash. Apple Quicktime followed. Microsoft Office was next, and finally, Windows wrapped up the list.
Perhaps this naming and shaming will encourage companies to do a better job of making their products safe. If not, at least it acts to provide security vendors and individuals with a little more information.
