Apple's iTunes, QuickTime, High On Cyber Security Vulnerability List, Kasperky Lab Says

By: Ken Rapoza, Forbes

PopularApple programs iTunes and QuickTime are being used by malware code writers to hack into computer platforms and potentially steal data, Russian-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said Friday.

In their third quarter IT Threat Evolution report, Kaspersky Lab analyst Yury Namestnikov said that those two Apple programs appeared on the top 10 list of most vulnerable programs for the first time, beating out Microsoft products.

The iTunes vulnerabilities were spotted by Kaspersky on the Mac OSX v10.5 and later, Windows 7, Vista, and Windows XP SP2.  A Kaspersky Lab press officer said QuickTime exploits were found on Windows 7, Vista and Windows XP SP2 or later. But for Mac OSX users, the vulnerabilities either didn’t impact their computers or were addressed through security updates.

All told, Kaspersky Lab said that a total of 30,749,066 vulnerable programs and files were detected on computers using the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), with an average of 8 different vulnerabilities detected on each affected computer.

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