Microsoft Windows:
Viruses and Worms = 70,000+ (symantec.com)
Spyware programs = 78,000 (www.pestpatrol.com)
Burrowers = 40 (www.pestpatrol.com)
80% of PCs infected with spyware (webroot.com)
Last year alone (www.pestpatrol.com):
500 new Trojans
500 new keyloggers
1,287 new adware apps
40 burrowers

Mac OS X:
Viruses and Worms = 0
Spyware programs = 0
Adware = 0
Keyloggers = 0
Burrowers = 0
Trojans = 3
Rootkit = 1

Looks like it's actually a case of "Viruses for the rest of you".

Note that Trojans can't spread by themselves - they are bits of code that pretend they are something else and need to be downloaded and opened by a user.

Note also the Rootkit discovered on a couple of OS X machines is a set of scripts that requires root access to be turned on (turned off by default on all Macs). The hacker also needs to know the root password and the malware has no mechanism of spreading and infecting other computers by itself.

Your espousal of the theory of "Security through Obscurity" fails to explain the fact that the number 1 web server, open source Apache with around 69% marketshare has far fewer attacks (including viruses and worms) than Microsoft's IIS which comes in at only 21% marketshare (Netcraft.com)? It also does not explain why the many flavours of Linux suffer from so many instances of malware despite having a small marketshare (similar to OS X I fact).

31 vulnerabilities (mostly in open source components of Mac OS X) which were promptly patched by Apple does not constitute "increased attacks on OS X" as no attacks using any of these now closed vulnerabilities have been recorded.

John Gruber has a useful article on why Windows suffers so much malware:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/broken_windows

However, no software can be perfect and it would be foolish to say there won't eventually appear some malware targeting the 10 million+ OS X users out there - however, today is not that day. Mac OS X has been sitting untouched for 4 years now without blemish which speaks to a very impressive security story which would be a much more constructive issue for you to be writing about.

Martin Hill
Information Management Services
Curtin University of Technology
Western Australia