Mac Malware Inevitable?

As Mac’s gain more of the market share it is almost inevitable that malware/virus writers will start to target them. One study released by McAfee last year showed a 228 percent increase in OS X vulnerabilities, from 45 in 2003 to 143 in 2005. Which leads to the question – who is doing more to secure their OS? Microsoft or Apple? It also brings up an important question which is Apple ready for a larger user base? Microsoft has been doing it for years and just like anything else experience is what matters. With the recent release of Vista (Microsofts new OS) it has a number of built in security features as well as other improvements and is definitely a step forward for Microsoft.

Another thing to point out is that OS’ are actually becoming harder to hack and that most exploits are focused on Applications and not the core OS. Well, considering Apple makes a large portition of applications that many Mac users use it leads you to wonder if that’s a good thing or not. Meanwhile with Windows there are many 3rd party softwares out there. Of course, there are many 3rd party applications for the Mac OS, however the core applications such as the Apple installer, iPhoto, iChat, Quicktime, and Safari as well as many others are pre-installed and used by many Mac users daily.

Now if you think about it Apple does own a particular part of the market share in the digital music world. Their iPod has a huge market share and I wouldn’t be surprised if it started to be targetted eventually.