Shoppers are advised to update their browser plug-ins

You keep your browsers up to date, right? So are you also keeping your browser plug-ins up to date?

Using a free browser security test from Qualys, two in five (39 per cent) of computers submitted for testing were affected by critical vulnerabilities, mostly related to browser plug-ins.

Based on 1.4 million BrowserCheck computer scans, Wolfgang Kandek, Qualys CTO, says that browser plug-ins were a bigger part of the problem than core security software.

"Browsers themselves are only partly to blame though; we see most of them quite up-to-date, with Chrome leading the pack with 90 per cent, Firefox at 85 per cent and Internet Explorer trailing with 75 per cent," Kandek explained. "The larger part of the problems are contributed by the plug-ins that we use to extend the capabilities of our browsers, led by Adobe Shockwave and followed by Oracle Java and Apple Quicktime."

Kandeks message can be found in a blog post here.