I ran across an interesting article on ZD Net talking about the month of Apple bugs (MOAB). Some interesting bits were “Apple’s 2007 patch count is an eye-opener. Seven updates, 62 vulnerabilities.” and “in Apple’s public bulletins, the company is making it clear that many of the MOKB/MOAB flaws were “high risk” issues that could lead to arbitrary code execution attacks. Very serious issues.”

In my previous posts on Apple here and here I posited, “a likely reason there aren’t viruses circulating for Macs is due to the lack market share. It’s certainly not that they are invulnerable; it’s just that no one is motivated to fool with the platform.” The MOAB proved this true showing that a couple of security researchers were able to turn up a lot of vulnerabilities in just a month, many of which were considered “very serious issues” by Apple. I realize viruses aren’t the same as vulnerabilities, but in my earlier posts I was more focused on the vulnerability aspect, I just used viruses as a jumping in point due to the Apple commercials. In my opinion, these vulnerabilities are much more serious than any virus.

When the comment “Oh yeah.. okay.. One in how many years? And it’s not even Mac specific? Uh hunh…” appeared on one my Apple posts I just hung my head, because this seems to be the quintessential attitude by Apple and Mac users a like.

Macs seem to be gaining momentum in the market place both with personal users and among corporations. If this trend continues Apple is really going to need to take security seriously, or they are going to find themselves in the same position Microsoft was in. Years ago when security issues became a big deal for windows, Microsoft wasn’t ready to deal with them and it made them look silly. Apple do you have your dunce cap ready?