Apple has contracted the specialists at Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Lab to analyze the vulnerabilities of its Mac OS X operating system and improve its security, the computing.co.uk website reported on Monday.
The OS X security issue became especially important in early April, when Dr. Web, a Russian computer security company, reported finding botnets - networks of compromised computers controlled by hackers - that included more than 500,000 infected Macs. It was previously thought that Apple computers enjoyed better protection from viruses than computers operating on Microsoft Windows. The appearance of this latest threat has forced Apple to address the security issue.
“Apple recently invited us to improve its security. We’ve begun an analysis of its vulnerabilities, and the malware targeting it,” Kaspersky CTO Nikolai Grebennikov said. “Mac OS is really vulnerable,” he added.
Antivirus experts, including those at Kaspersky Lab, say the OS X system has a better security record than Windows because the Apple operating system is used on fewer machines.
But rising sales of Apple computers, and the appearance of botnets targeting them, indicates the amount of malware may also increase.
