IT security and research organization The SANS Institute is releasing its annual Top 20 list of Internet security vulnerabilities this week, with the intention of offering organizations at least a starting point for addressing critical issues.

"When you tell your systems people to test for thousands of vulnerabilities, your enterprise comes to a stop. What the Top 20 does is give you a place to start your remediation each year," says SANS Director Alan Paller.

The SANS list is compiled from recommendations by leading security researchers and companies around the world, from institutes such as the National Infrastructure Protection Center and the U.K.'s National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre.

The Top 20 is actually two lists of 10: the 10 most commonly exploited vulnerabilities in Windows and the 10 most commonly exploited vulnerabilities in Unix (news - web sites) and Linux (news - web sites).

Topping the Windows list is Web servers and services, while the Unix list leads with BIND domain name systems. While each entry represents a sometimes broad category, the more than 100 page SANS document then drills down into specific security holes in the categories, and instructions for correcting them.

Many of the vulnerabilities have made the list before, but there were some surprises this year, according Ross Patel, director of the Top 20 list.

Vulnerabilities in file sharing applications and instant messaging (IM), which ranked 7 and 10 on the Windows list, respectively, represent fairly new categories of risk, Patel says.

"There was almost unanimous concern among experts around file sharing and peer-to-peer," Patel says. Like with IM, file sharing applications are simple and operational in nature and security concerns are often overlooked, Patel says.

Web browsers, at number 6 on the Windows list, were another hot topic.

"Hands down Web browsers for Windows were the topic that caused most of the harm, pain, and passionate debate for experts from every continent," Patel says. With the number of vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser prompting some security experts to suggest earlier this year that users switch to other browsers, list contributors were left wondering if they should recommend the same, Patel says.

However, they finally decided that the move was too much to ask, and that they should endorse securing whatever platform a user chooses.

In fact, this year for the first time this list gives instructions on how to deal with flaws on various software platforms.

"We tried to make the list as relevant as possible this year," Patel says.

According to Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at network security firm Qualys, and list contributor, the Top 20 is widely used by organizations as a security benchmark.

"There is a consensus among people from the industry and academia that this is the list of the most critical vulnerabilities," Eschelbeck says. "With 50 new vulnerabilities announced a week, or about 2500 a year, the challenge is for companies to decide which ones they should be looking at. It helps them prioritize," he says.

The list will be available on the SANS Web site.

"Because there are a relatively small set of issues, you can give them to the systems administrators and give them a few months to get them done so they can be heroes," the SANS' Paller says. "It makes sorting out the mess more reasonable."

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