Don't tell the Wired IT overlords, but yesterday witnessed an unofficial security tune-up for a Windows XP box here in THREAT LEVEL's lair. To my consternation, some quick diagnostics showed that Flash and QuickTime were both not the newest, flashiest and quickest – not to mention safest – versions. This has been rectified.
For those who want to play along at home, I started with Secunia's fun and gratis Software Inspector, and then followed up, purely for kicks, with a little virus scanning through Trend Micro's HouseCall.
I quite like Secunia's tool since it warns you about older versions of some software that remain on your computer even after you update the new one. Sun Java developers, I'm talking about you here. For safety sake, you need to remove these manually via the Add/Remove programs menu in the control panel.
From there, I checked a few pieces of software that don't have automatic update tools and checked for new versions either from within the app or at their websites. Software you might like that works this way includes multi-IM client Pidgin, the Videolan VLC media player and the free Foxit PDF Reader (you aren't using the bloated and annoying Adobe Reader still, are you?).
Also the Washington Post's indispensable Brian Krebs notes that Sun's Java has a security update that Sun's own updater doesn't know about. Grab it here (fifth item), then un-install the old version.
If you have your own fun tricks, drop them in the comments.
Photo: Ole1981
