Comments on: Free Secunia PSI: Monitor for Software Updates

By: Lester

Lester — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:23:46 +0000

Well, for about the last several months Secunia has regularly made false positive identification of insecure Adobe software, prompting people to download patches, when in fact those patches have already been applied. They have not updated their system to inspect those relevant files that are actually updated. Adobe does not update any global version, so this can be confusing. However, software like Secunia should not make such error — and so regularly. Just recently, I simply rescanned and got back that I had no insecure files. Others who posted in the Secunia forum just kept downloading re-patching using the recommended Secunia patches, and got nowhere.

Moral: Secunia recommendations must be taken with a grain or two of salt.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:56:23 +0000

I’m sure he is right, I just couldn’t find an instance where Secunia didn’t point me to the latest version.

By: Darrell Icenogle

Darrell Icenogle — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:13:42 +0000

Ryan, I think Ian is correct. Secunia PSI doesn’t try to keep all your software up to date, e.g., for the newest functionality. It looks for application versions that either have known security holes, or that are end of life, and lists them for you, with convenient links to the download sites for secure versions, when available.

There is a screencast on Secunia PSI here:

[mainstream-guides.com]

By: Saturday Speedlinks » Solo Technology

Saturday Speedlinks » Solo Technology — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:51:10 +0000

[...] Secunia’s PSI (Personal Software Inspector) — I’ve mentioned Secunia’s Software Inspector back in January of this year and liked it then. That’s the online version. Now we have the Personal Software Inspector which you install direct to your machine. It is free, in beta, and will keep you advised of over 4200 applications. If you have something out of date or with security issues it’ll tell you. [free version is private/home use only]. I’ve just installed it, stay tuned for more. [source: CyberNet News] [...]

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:23:16 +0000

Well the site does say that it provides:

Direct Download Links to security updates & patches

Note that it also includes patches in the list. I’ve gone through the listing of products they have and there are entries for all of the products that I use along with the latest version of them. So maybe I’m just lucky that Secunia has all of my apps, and for me it is going to replace File Hippo’s update checker.

Don’t get me wrong, File Hippo’s update checker is a great app but Secunia can do the same job for me just a little more in detail.

At any rate, I give priority to be notified of updates that pertain to security patches. I want to be notified of those first before any others.

And maybe I’m wrong in thinking that PSI is a software update monitor, but from my point of view it really is. It is monitoring the software I have installed for updates (even if they are only security updates as you say). It says that right on their site.

By: Ian Cammarata

Ian Cammarata — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:51:53 +0000

This article was labeled as such, and kind of provides a misleading description. This isn’t just my opinion, it’s also reinforced by the fact that two of the comments said they’d rather use the File Hippo update checker.

PSI IS NOT A SOFTWARE UPDATE MONITOR, it is a security analyzer. It only notifies you of updates that are security related, and only if the version you have installed has a known vulnerability. And it doesn’t just monitor installed software, it scans all executables and dlls on your system.

Although the File Hippo software update checker is handy, it serves a drastically different purpose than PSI.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:08:19 +0000

I didn’t notice much of a performance hit because I don’t think that it is regularly scanning for new software. The initial scan took a few minutes and it found the applications, and from there on out it probably just watches for new installations or something.

This is way better than the FileHippo update checker though since it is actively monitoring more than 4,200 applications. FileHippo has a pretty good database, but it is still limited compared to this one.

By: Mohan

Mohan — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:37:28 +0000

Nice tool will be recommending this one for sure.

By: KylesCove

KylesCove — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:22:21 +0000

I use File Hippo as well, although not regularly. Having it in your system tray is interesting, but it seems like it might slow down your computer some. Did you notice any performance issues?

By: Tinhed

Tinhed — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:50:36 +0000

[filehippo.com]

Much smaller in scope and requires the .NET framework. But does the job for me.