637 million Web surfers using old browsers open to hackers

July 2, 2008 – 6:11 AM

Updated your Web browser lately? Ever? If not, you and 637 million other Net surfers with outdated, insecure browsers are inviting criminal hackers into your computer, researchers warn.

Using Internet Explorer? You’re likely to be one of the biggest offenders.

The researchers wanted to know why so many recent attacks have been targeted at the browser and why so many were successful. Using data from mid-June, they found that about 40% of users were surfing with vulnerable versions of a browser. At the low end, just over half (52%) of IE users were running the latest version. At the top, Firefox: 92% of users were running the latest version. For Apple’s Safari, 70% were up to date, while; 90% of Opera users were current.

Source:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/07/report-637-mill.html