English

Are Software Updates Useless Against Advanced Persistent Threats?

Software Engineering 2023-06-14 v1

Abstract

A dilemma worth Shakespeare's Hamlet is increasingly haunting companies and security researchers: ``to update or not to update, this is the question``. From the perspective of recommended common practices by software vendors the answer is unambiguous: you should keep your software up-to-date. But is common sense always good sense? We argue it is not.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.07355,
  title  = {Are Software Updates Useless Against Advanced Persistent Threats?},
  author = {Fabio Massacci and Giorgio Di Tizio},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.07355},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:03:19.179Z