Report: Outdated browsers put 637m users at risk

Robert Vamosi CNET News.com Published: 02 Jul A group of researchers on Tuesday said 637 million web users are surfing with outdated internet browsers and are, therefore, at greater risk of web-based attacks. Using data collected from Google web searches and security firm Secunia, the researchers — Stefan Frei of ETH, Zurich, Thomas Dübendorfer of Google, Gunter Ollmann of IBM ISS, and Martin May of ETH, Zurich — analysed the browsers used in a report. They did so in an effort to understand why so many recent attacks by criminal hackers have been aimed at the browser, and why those attacks have been so successful. Overall, the authors found that roughly 40 percent of users were using insecure versions of web browsers. Among the least compliant were users of Internet Explorer (IE), which currently dominates the internet... [read full story]