Those who have experienced the heyday of the war between Microsoft and Apple remember that the Cupertino, Calif., company has always had and maintained a reputation for offering more secure software than its competitor from Redmond. The alleged lack of viruses and other vulnerabilities in Mac OS was a strong argument to convince consumers not to use Windows. In large part, this reputation was deserved.
But, times have changed. Over the years, Microsoft has made security a priority of its software, and has developed a very strong reactivity to correct the flaws as soon as they are reported. Today, it is reaping the benefits, even if Windows as an operating system is, by far, the most affected by the attacks.
Security firm Kaspersky has released the list of the top 10 vulnerabilities detected among its users in the third quarter of 2012. Surprisingly, Microsoft products are now absent from the rankings. Apple, however, is present twice with faults present in QuickTime and iTunes, considered “highly critical.” Their vulnerabilities appeared in 13.8% and 11.7% of computers, respectively. The vulnerabilities of iTunes were found by Kaspersky in Mac OS X v10.5 and later, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2. Meanwhile QuickTime vulnerabilities were found in Windows 7, Vista and Windows XP SP2 or later.
The two top spots are occupied by Oracle, which has serious difficulties in securing Java. The publisher is responsible for a “highly critical” flaw and another that was “extremely critical.” Java vulnerabilities are used in 56% of network attacks.
But the worst is Adobe, which occupies half of the seats with Flash, Acrobat Reader and Shockwave. Two vulnerabilities found in Adobe software are considered “extremely critical” by Kaspersky. The last place is occupied by Nullsoft Winamp.
On mobile devices, the security firm detected that 28% of all mobile devices that were attacked were running Android OS version 2.3.6, which was released in September 2011. In 48% of all cases, cyber criminals have used Gingerbread, installed on 55% of all devices, while, in 43% of all cases, the victims had Ice Cream Sandwich, which is installed on 23.7% of all devices.
Kaspersky Lab said a total of 30,749,066 vulnerable programs and files were detected with the computers used in the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), with an average of eight different vulnerabilities detected on each affected computer.
Here are the top 10 vulnerabilities for the third quarter:
1. Oracle Java Multiple Vulnerabilities (Highly Critical)
2. Oracle Java Three Vulnerabilities (Extremely Critical)
3. Adobe Flash Player Multiple Vulnerabilities (Highly Critical)
4. Adobe Flash Player Multiple Vulnerabilities (Highly Critical)
5. Adobe Reader/Acrobat Multiple Vulnerabilities (Extremely Critical)
6. Apple QuickTime Multiple Vulnerabilities (Highly Critical)
7. Apple iTunes Multiple Vulnerabilities (Highly Critical)
8. Winamp AVI / IT File Processing Vulnerabilities (Highly Critical)
9. Adobe Shockwave Player Multiple Vulnerabilities (Highly Critical)
10. Adobe Flash Player Multiple Vulnerabilities (Extremely Critical)