Secunia PSI – useful windows tool
Posted by johnb | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 25-05-2008
Tags: Microsoft, secunia, security
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I heard about Secunia PSI on the recent Security Now podcast. It’s a pretty handy tool – we’re all pretty well drilled into keeping Windows Update current to ensure we have the latest updates for the OS, what about all the apps we have installed?
Secunia PSI comes to the rescue. It’s a light weight download at around 500k and it peforms a scan of your computer for .exe/.dll if i understand correctly. It then checks back with their database of applications to see if there is a security related updated version for the app.
For instance, on my 1 week old installation of Vista it’s telling me my Sun Java 1.6 has a security fix available and provides me a link to download the patch
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If you’ve got an software that’s gone ‘end of life’ then it’s able to show you that too and also the ‘patched’ tab shows you all the software that it detected and the patch level – all on one screen!
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By default it installs it self to start on boot but i think that’s a bit excessive, I prefer to opt to run these scans myself so I’m always in control (or try to be) about what’s running on my machines.
