A Flashback trojan that affected over 600,000 OS X machines with relative ease, earlier this month, exposed gaping holes in the OS X software architecture and got industry experts discussing how competent Apple is at dealing with the threat of malware, on its end. Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of security company Kaspersky Lab, believes that Apple is "10 years behind Microsoft in terms of security," and the ease with which scores of OS X machines could be compromised by malware in the recent times formed the basis of his assertion.

"For many years I've been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It's always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms," Kaspersky commented. Increase in malware and cybercrime against OS X machines, according to him are "just a question of time and market share. Cyber criminals have now recognised that Mac is an interesting area. Now we have more, it's not just Flashback or Flashfake. Welcome to Microsoft's world, Mac. It's full of malware."