From: ACassel2000 <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, June 22, 2010 10:43 pm
>    Most 
> of the XP updates, as many have mentioned, are security fixes for things 
> that have not, nor ever will occur in the wild.

   We might just be disagreeing about the semantics of "most", but
several of the major virus/malware outbreaks of the last five years have
relied on exploiting vulnerabilities for which fixes had been available
through Automatic Updates for 6-24 months -- any systems that were kept
up to date were already immune.  Sure, the original flaw was
Microsoft's, but they'd done everything they could to repair it BEFORE
it became a huge problem for their customers.
  Without going back and checking, I'd have to estimate that this sort
of thing has averaged about 2-4 outbreaks a year since XP came out.  So
an unpatched original installation of XP might be facing 25 or more
serious and fixable threats if you just connect it to the Internet
without protection.

  IF you had some crystal ball that told which updates fixed flaws that
were going to be targetted by attackers next, you could use that
information to assess the risks in leaving those updates uninstalled;
without it, you're playing Russian Roulette.  How lucky do you feel?
 
David Gillett, CISSP


David Gillett

             Do you want to signoff PCSOFT or just change to
                    Digest mode - visit our web site:
                   http://freepctech.com/pcbuild.shtml