Over a year ago, after a “spate” of purported Mac viruses, we wrote how those 3 viruses made the malware score 100,000-to-3. That is, 100,000+ pieces of malware for Windows, 3 for Mac OS X. Well it seems we’ve now fallen even further ahead. According to the major security company McAfee, the score is now 236,000-to-7. 236,000 pieces of malware for Windows, and all the way up to 7 for OS X. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

McAfee seems pretty sure of their detailed figures, citing additional facts including:

1. • About 700 pieces of malware for various flavors of Unix (so the score is really 236,000-to-700-to-7). It’s unstated how many of these could also affect Mac OS X’s Unix core however.
   

2. • 69 pieces of malware for “older builds of the MacOS,” presumably Mac OS 9 and before.
   

3. • 8 pieces of malware for, of all things, HyperCard.
   

So McAfee’s study certainly seems detailed and thorough, and quite believable. The article goes on to say “it is clear that OSX malware is not taking off yet. With an estimated OSX marketshare of about 5% on the desktop systems one would expect to see more malware for OSX.” Go team! But we can’t rest on our laurels -- we all need to be sure to do what we can (like installing personal firewalls and anti-virus applications) to help us fall further and further ahead!

Finally, as an interesting postscript, one of the comments on the article actually asks what the 7 pieces of malware are!