The Surge in Mac Attacks

[Detector]

Source: http://www.esecurityplanet.com/trend...le.php/3604801

Just as Apple Computer launched a new ad touting OSX's resilience against viruses, the Macintosh operating system and applications have come under fire for harboring serious security flaws.

Security software vendor McAfee, The SANS Institute and independent researchers have all recently published reports slamming Mac security.


According to McAfee, from 2003 to 2005 the annual rate of vulnerability discovery on Apple's Mac OS platform has increased by 228 percent, compared to Microsoft's products, which only saw a 73 percent increase.

That may be comparing Apples to oranges, but McAfee also noted that, "as demonstrated by its March 2006 patch, which corrected 20 vulnerabilities, Apple's Mac OS platform is just as vulnerable to targeted malware attacks as other operating systems."

A lot of people have been thinking of Apple as not having any vulnerabilities, said Rohit Dhamankar, editor of @RISK and the SANS Top 20, and manager of security research at 3Com.