It isn’t over yet, but 2006 is already a record year when it comes to security vulnerabilities.

There is, however, a silver lining: A smaller chunk of the flaws are high risk.

Last year, researchers at Internet Security Systems identified 5,195 vulnerabilities in software. On Monday, the count for this year stood at 5,450, according to the Atlanta-based company’s survey, and the projected total for the whole of the year is almost 7,500 bugs.

“Three-quarters through the year, 2006 is looking to be a huge jump in terms of security vulnerabilities,” said Gunter Ollmann, director of X-Force, the research and development group at ISS.

The number of problems found has increased as bug hunters and software makers have become more skilled at finding them and as access to automated audit tools has improved, Ollmann said. Also, there is more code to comb for security holes, because people use more complex software than ever.

Read the whole story at ZDNet

Keep those Operating Systems updated folks.

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