Linux vendors are rushing to patch a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux kernel that can be exploited by local attackers to gain root access on the system.

Vulnerability research firm Secunia announced that, effective from the beginning of the year, software vendors will have a six-month deadline to fix vulnerabilities reported through its Vulnerability Coordination Reward Programme (SVCRP).

Danish vulnerability management company Secunia aims to make the task of reporting software vulnerabilities easier for security researchers by offering to coordinate disclosure with vendors on their behalf.

Secunia, a Danish security company that makes two tools that ensure applications have up-to-date patches, released a product on Wednesday that can deploy non-Microsoft patches using that company's widely used patching tool.

Computers lacking patches for long-known vulnerabilities potentially face more of a hacking risk than from zero-day exploits, or attacks targeting vulnerabilities that haven't been publicly disclosed, according to new research from Secunia.

One of the biggest security threats out there doesn't come from malicious hackers or online identity thieves. It actually comes from you, the innocent PC user and your out-of-date software. But you can put an end to that threat with the free Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI), which identifies and helps patch the problematic programs you may be running.

Happy New Year! Microsoft's first Patch Tuesday for 2011 is scheduled a week from today on the 11th of January, but there's no time like the present to kick things off for the year.

Secunia has updated its Personal Software Inspector (PSI) with the ability to silently download and apply patches from multiple vendors soon after their release. PSI 2.0 is now available in an open beta test,