McAfee Releases Mac Security White Paper

McAfee's Avert research lab has put out a white paper on the increasing number of Apple and Mac security vulnerabilities. It's titled: The New Apple of Malware's Eye: Is Mac OS X the Next Windows?

It has some agitating statistics such as the 228 percent increase in the annual vulnerability discovery rate for Apple's products from 2003 to 2005. However, it's important to take a closer look at the numbers.

McAfee is counting the number of vulnerabilities not the number of security threats. A vulnerability is the weakness in a software or hardware product that allows a piece malware to take advantage of it. For example, The NIST National Vulnerability Database, which McAfee sources, reports 92 Mac OS X vulnerabilities in 2005. That doesn't mean that there were 92 Mac OS X viruses, worms, Trojans, etc. circulating in the wild in 2005.

That said, as the Mac attracts more market share, the Mac will attract more malware writers. Isn't the latest Apple "Viruses" TV ad basically a casting call?