Pierluigi Paganini
January 04, 2016
Which is the software with the greatest number of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in 2015? You will be surprised to know that the software with the major number of vulnerabilities is the Apple Mac OS X, that accounted for 384 vulnerabilities, followed by Apple iOS with 375 vulnerabilities. The Adobe Flash Player is just at third place with 314 vulnerabilities, followed by Adobe AIR SDK, with 246 vulnerabilities and Adobe AIR itself, also with 246 vulnerabilities.
The data were provided by CVE Details, which manages data coming from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system tracks publicly disclosed security vulnerabilities.
The situation is quite changed respect 2014, and sincerely I was also surprised. In 2014 the software with the most vulnerabilities was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Apple Mac OS X, the Linux Kernel, Google Chrome, and Apple iOS. It is interesting to note the progress made in the improvement of security for both Chrome and IE products.
The Top 50 chart reports various Windows versions separately, in some cases the same flaws affect several version of the Windows OSs, resulting a lot of overlap.
“The argument for separating them is probably one of market share, though that’s a hard one to agree to, given that Android and iOS are not split into separate versions. This is the nature of CVEs.” reported VentureBeat.
Other OSs, including Mac OS X, Android and iOS are not split into separate versions.
Which are the Top 50 vendors of the software affected by flaws disclosed in 2015?
Microsoft account for 1561 vulnerabilities, followed by Adobe with 1504 and Apple with 1147.
Be aware, the above data only refer publicly known vulnerabilities, but you have to consider that a number of security flaws are not reported. Another factor to consider is that this data are not linked to the number of cyber attacks exploiting them in the wild, Adobe and Java for example are the software most exploited by hackers in targeted attacks.
(Security Affairs – Mac OS X, CVE)
