In an interesting twist on the commonly held view that OSX is much more secure ZDNet has actually done some testing and dispelled a lot of the rumors and replaced them with some cold hard facts.
| Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X vulnerability stats for 2007 |
| | XP | Vista | XP + Vista | Mac OS X |
| Total extremely critical | 3 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Total highly critical | 19 | 12 | 23 | 234 |
| Total moderately critical | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| Total less critical | 3 | 1 | 4 | 7 |
| Total flaws | 34 | 20 | 44 | 243 |
| Average flaws per month | 2.83 | 1.67 | 3.67 | 20.25 |
X Extremely critical
H Highly critical
M Moderately critical
L Less critical
I guess it goes to show that a lot of the superiority OSX was able to claim in the past came from it's very low marketshare making it a less popular target for exploits, but as that share and awareness has grown it's become a juicier target. Like Flash (which has also been exposed recently as a cause for concern) I hope Apple step up to the plate and make a difference early in 2008.
It's interesting to see how the testing also confirms that Microsoft have done a good job in improving the security of Vista over WinXP - hopefully Service Pack 1 will continue this trend in the right direction.
It's the sort of article that ThinkSecret would have had as front-page news... if Apple had not litigated them to the wall.