Study: Unpatched Web Browsers Prevalent on the Internet

Only 59.1 percent of people use up-to-date, fully patched Web browsers, putting the remainder at risk from growing threats from diligent hackers, according to a new study published by researchers in Switzerland.

The study, published Tuesday, is one of the most comprehensive analysis of what versions of Web browsers people are using on the Internet. The study was conducted by researchers at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Google and IBM Internet Security Services.

Web browsers are often a weak link in the security chain, as software vulnerabilities can make it easy for hackers to gain control of a PC. When that happens, hackers can perform malicious acts such as stealing personal data or turning PCs into spam-spewing drones.

What the researchers found is that although software vendors provide patches for security problems, it can take days, weeks or months before people update their applications. In the meantime, those users are at risk.

But it's not entirely the fault of users, since Web browser vendors haven't exactly made patching easy, said Stefan Frei, a doctoral student at the institute, which is known as ETH Zurich, and one of the report's authors. The Web browser is still fairly young technology, and the industry has yet to settle on a dominant, well-tested design, he said.

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