For years many people have thought that getting a Mac would be the solution to hackers, viruses, spyware and much more. And for quite a while this was the case as many hackers did not waste their time with OS X. In recent years though Apple has seen a steady increase in Mac sales and pretty much dominates the over $1000 notebook range. Since these computers are priced higher it brings more attention from hackers and other shady parties. The latest report from GFI shows that Apple’s major operating system sits on top of the leaderboard when it comes to security vulnerabilities in 2014.
Appple’s Mac OS X had a total of 147 vulnerabilities of which 64 were labeled as “high risk”. Surprisingly Apple’s iOS took the number 2 position with 127 vulnerabilities, 32 of which were “high risk:. Coming in 3rd was the Linux Kernel with 119 total vulnerabilities which 24 were “high risk”.
There were a total of 7038 new security vulnerabilities reported in 2014 according to GDI, this is an increase from the 4794 from the previous year.
We would like to point out that the graph you see above groups all versions (Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, etc.) together in a single group, whereas Windows version’s get their own row. Also we do not see Android listed here, although we assume it is included in the Linux Kernel row.
Moving on to Applications it is no surprise that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer leads the pack with 242 total vulnerabilities, which is nearly twice of the next application on the list which is Google Chrome with 124.
If this tells you anything its to not use Internet Explorer unless you really have to and to make sure you uninstall it on your parents / relative’s computer! We all know the drill of uninstalling all of those toolbars!
With all of these vulnerabilities we suggest that you always keep your operating system as well as all of the applications you use up to date and patched.
Source: GFI | News Archive
