Apple's Mac OS X is the next victim in line for the operating system's slaughter according to Russian security developer Kaspersky; however, the platform from the Cupertino-based company will fail miserably to outperform Windows Vista. Kaspersky predicts that Microsoft's latest operating system will take the center stage of security in 2007, together with the flaws that render the product vulnerable. "There's no question that Vista, and vulnerabilities associated with this new operating system, will be the main security event of 2007," forecasted Alexander Gostev, Senior Virus Analyst, Kaspersky Lab.

The Russian security company has warned for some time now that malware will begin the transition from the Windows platform to Mac OS X and to Linux. In this respect, Windows Vista has a big advantage over the rival operating systems. Microsoft with Windows has been through the baptism of fire, and has managed to survive. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of Mac and Linux users fail to deploy security solutions with their operating systems and are, as such, widely vulnerable to attacks. The market niche constituted by Mac OS X and Linux will come under attack, believes Kaspersky.

"It's also likely that there will be a significant increase in the number of malicious programs for other operating systems, primarily for MacOS, and for other *nix systems. Gaming consoles such as PlayStation and Nintendo are also likely to be targeted, as the increasing number of such devices and their ability to connect to each other and the Internet will make them a juicy potential target for virus writers. It's true that at the moment, malicious code for these devices has been confined to the proof of concept/ vandal category. However, 2007 may be the year when viruses for 'non-computers' take a quantum leap and start to evolve actively, although the likelihood of this happening is small," Gostev added.

Kaspersky also predicted that the technological evolution and sophistication of malicious code will continue and will focus on polymorphism, garbage code and rootkit capabilities. Kaspersky's conclusion is obvious, even in the context of Microsoft's safest operating system to date, Windows Vista, and even with Linux and Mac OS X, end users will still need... Kaspersky.