Windows Vulnerability Scanner

Windows is probably the operating system that is attacked the most, some say because it has the largest user base, some say because it is simply insecure. Whatever it is Windows users should do whatever they can to protect their system and patch all possible known security vulnerabilities to make sure their system won’t be added to one of the botnets out there.

I discovered a software Windows Vulnerability Scanner at Tech Malaya which scans a Windows NT system, that is Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server or Windows Vista for security vulnerabilities. It seems to use information from the Microsoft Knowledgebase exclusively and one would assume that a system that downloaded all Windows Updates recently reveal no vulnerabilities. I let the software scan my system and it did find six critical and one important security vulnerability that had not been patched yet.

I’m not sure how this can be but was glad that the application revealed the information to me. It lists the vulnerabilities and provides links to the Microsoft website that contains information about it.

The Knowledgebase article at Microsoft contains a link to the download of the security patch and I did install all the patches one after the other. An improvement would have been if the software would automatically download the patches and install them on the system, or at least those that the user selects. If you have not been to Windows Update for a while I suggest you start there and scan the system again afterwards which should fix most of the security vulnerabilities found during the first scan.