Worrying, 60% of Joomla site are not up to date.

This study aims to provide an overview of the utilisation of Joomla in Switzerland. We focused particularly on the following points:

1. Finding the percentage of sites running Joomla ;
2. Analysing the Joomla's branch being used ; 1.0 or 1.5 ;
3. Sort which version of which branch is being used ; 1.0.x or 1.5.x

Méthodology

By using different sources (search engines, web directories, etc.), we did a list including more than 25000 internet sites from Switzerland and form any size.

Then, using a script analysis, we detect if a Joomla site is being checked. If so, we determine the installed version.

Data collection took place from 15 to 21 march 2010 from a dedicated server from a hosting provider.

Results

Joomla sites ratio

Number of analysed sites : 25'555
Percent of websites using Joomla :  9,5%
This result confirms the important place that Joomla takes among other CMS.

Versions

There are two branchs actually being used : Joomla 1.0.x and Joomla 1.5.x with the following proportions :

43% of Joomla 1.0.x
57% of Joomla 1.5.x

Despite the Joomla 1.0.x update were abandoned, this version is nowadays largely used. Indeed, this explains itself by the difficulty to migrate from a version to another. For now, this version did not show any lack of security in its last version 1.0.15.

Updates

These are interpreted versions, in case of doubt, we took the highest version found.

Joomla 1.0                                                           Joomla 1.5

The finding is worrying ! More than 60% of Joomla websites are not up to date !

At this point of the document, it's essential to remind why these updates are so importants.
They bring improvement on those next things :

• Bugs fixing
  
• Improvement of functionnalities
  
• Vulnerabilities fixing !

Consequences

The fix of such vulnerabilities is absolutely crucial, because it allows to avoid that a badly intentionned person takes control of the website. Consequences could be dramatic :

• Black-listaging on search engines such as Google ;
• Impersonation ;
• Data theft ;
• Storage space being used for foreign files.

Conclusion

It is worrying that over 60% of the Joomla websites does not work on the latest version of CMS. These omissions provide opportunities for significant nuisance to hackers and really putting in danger the proper functioning of the website.