2021 proved to be a watershed year in terms of cybercrime activity, with numerous malicious actors trying to maximize profits by targeting as many devices and institutions that they could. Apple has often been thought of as a company with highly secure products and gadgets, but with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that this recent report from Atlas VPN shows that this label might not apply to the tech giant anymore.
The report revealed that Apple’s vulnerabilities grew by 467% in 2021 alone. Microsoft and Google recorded the highest increase in vulnerabilities in 2021, but in spite of the fact that this is the case Apple’s vulnerability increase in the latter half of 2021 was comparable to theirs. While Apple’s vulnerabilities increased by just 67 in the first half of 2021, this increase surged to 380 new ones in the latter half which suggests that cyber criminals are starting to focus on this company’s products by exploiting said loopholes.
However, Google and Microsoft are still some of the worst performing companies in this respect, with the former getting 511 new vulnerabilities and the latter getting 428. Another thing to note is that both of these companies saw their rate of vulnerabilities decrease somewhat in the latter half of 2021, whereas Apple’s increased twenty times over and that is not a good sign for the year to come because such increases tend to be exponential.
Apple’s interoperability in its tech ecosystem might be a prime cause for this surge. An exploitable bit of code in one Apple product can likely be implemented in several other products as well. Many of these vulnerabilities are found in the Safari browser, so this might be a piece of software that Apple would want to optimize to reduce its current status as an entry point for malicious actors. Apple is losing its edge because users preferred it in large part thanks to its secure systems, and if that goes away the company will have a lot less to offer customers.
Read next: Malware is Getting Better at Evading Security Software
The report revealed that Apple’s vulnerabilities grew by 467% in 2021 alone. Microsoft and Google recorded the highest increase in vulnerabilities in 2021, but in spite of the fact that this is the case Apple’s vulnerability increase in the latter half of 2021 was comparable to theirs. While Apple’s vulnerabilities increased by just 67 in the first half of 2021, this increase surged to 380 new ones in the latter half which suggests that cyber criminals are starting to focus on this company’s products by exploiting said loopholes.
However, Google and Microsoft are still some of the worst performing companies in this respect, with the former getting 511 new vulnerabilities and the latter getting 428. Another thing to note is that both of these companies saw their rate of vulnerabilities decrease somewhat in the latter half of 2021, whereas Apple’s increased twenty times over and that is not a good sign for the year to come because such increases tend to be exponential.
Apple’s interoperability in its tech ecosystem might be a prime cause for this surge. An exploitable bit of code in one Apple product can likely be implemented in several other products as well. Many of these vulnerabilities are found in the Safari browser, so this might be a piece of software that Apple would want to optimize to reduce its current status as an entry point for malicious actors. Apple is losing its edge because users preferred it in large part thanks to its secure systems, and if that goes away the company will have a lot less to offer customers.
Read next: Malware is Getting Better at Evading Security Software
