Topic: 64% of MS Vulnerabilities Mitigated by Removing Admin Rights

[Nemesis]

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Of the total amount of security vulnerabilities put out by Microsoft in 2009, across all versions of Windows and Office, 64% are mitigated by removing administrator rights. Microsoft published 190 security vulnerabilities last year, and 121 of them are thwarted by running without administrator rights.

Breaking it down per product, the figures become even more interesting. Microsoft reported 55 Office vulnerabilities in 2009, and all of them are mitigated by removing admin rights. Of the 33 Internet Explorer issues reported, 94% were thwarted by removing admin rights. For Internet Explorer 8, 100% would be. If we restrict the vulnerabilities to just Windows, we see that 53% can be mitigated by not running as admin.