The volume of security vulnerabilities discovered in Apple's Macintosh platform has increased significantly over the last several years, according to a new report released by McAfee's Avert Labs.

The security software maker contends that the number of flaws found in the Mac operating system has increased by 228 percent since 2003. While the researchers said the number of serious vulnerabilities isolated in the latest version of Apple's operating system software, Mac OS X, is dwarfed by the quantity of problems unearthed in Microsoft's rival Windows during the same period, McAfee maintains that as Apple's products have become more popular, a larger number of glitches are being identified.

Perhaps even more disturbing, based on how closely Apple can tie its current wave of success to hot-selling consumer multimedia products, McAfee said that many of the reported issues have actually been related to the company's iPod devices and iTunes download service.

Apple representatives didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment on the report.

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For its part, McAfee released the findings alongside the announcement of its new package of anti-virus applications for Apple's Intel-based Macs. The vendor's VirusScan for Mactel 8.0 release runs under Apple's Rosetta emulator and promises protection from both Macintosh- and Windows-oriented viruses, as well as Trojans and other threats.

"The availability of Mac exploit code on the Internet makes it an open target for the same types of malware currently plaguing the Windows world," Eric Winsborrow, vice president of product marketing at McAfee, said in a statement. "As more companies deploy Mac systems running on the Intel platform in mixed environments, the risks of infection will most likely increase."

Apple has traditionally avoided many of the security issues that have plagued other products such as Windows, but several high-profile issues reported since the beginning of 2006 have thrown the company's Mac platform under additional scrutiny, including the arrival of two worm viruses affecting Mac OS X users.

In March, Apple was forced to release a security update that addressed five separate security vulnerabilities discovered in its Safari Web browser, including one issue for which exploit code was also identified. Another glitch, rated by researchers and the company as "extremely critical," allowed for possible remote code execution attacks on Mac computers if a user simply viewed a maliciously rigged Web page on one of the machines.

In April, Apple released a security bulletin detailing a glitch related to the security content of a version of Sun Microsystems' J2SE (Java 2 Standard Edition) Release 4 that it has been making available over its Software Update and Apple Downloads services.

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