Though Apple is at the top of the heap, having wrestled the position away from Oracle this year, the picture isn't much better for the rest of the list. The top-10 companies made up 38 per cent of the announced vulnerabilities and included Microsoft, HP, Adobe and Cisco. Google and Mozilla also squeezed onto the list in the ninth and tenth spots, respectively.
Mo' Market Share, Mo' Problems
Of course, this isn't entirely surprising when you consider, as the report does, the market-share of the affected software. While Apple's OSX isn't particularly prevalent, programs like iTunes, QuickTime and Safari are very common, even on Windows machines. Popular software is more likely to be the focus of hackers looking for exploits, and so an increased number of vulnerabilities are likely to be found.
Raw statistics like these do fail to tell half of the story, though. The report goes on to point out that the numbers don't indicate how quickly or effectively the flaws were fixed or whether they were even exploited.
However, the main take-home message from the report is that malicious attacks are increasingly being aimed at non-Microsoft products. While holes in Windows, Internet Explorer and Office were being found at approximately the same rate, year-on-year, the discovery of flaws in common third-party software is growing rapidly. The firm partly blames this on programs relying on users to apply patches and updates.
The full report is available from Secunia's website. For those who want to skip the reading, your time might be better spent making sure all of your software is up-to-date.
