A new report using data from the National Vulnerability Database at the National Standards and Technology Institute looked at the best technology products of the past 20 years and found those with the most vulnerabilities making them vulnerable to attacks by hackers and nation states.
The data was analyzed by TheBestVPN, which found that of all technology products in recent years, the one with the most vulnerabilities on a consistent basis year after year was Google’s Android operating system. According to the report, Android had the most vulnerabilities of all operating systems in 2019, 2017 and 2016. The last few years alone, Android got a reprieve from first place was in 2018, when Debian GNU / Linux had more vulnerabilities.
But going back 20 years, the data tells a more complete story. By looking at a company’s products as a whole, the authors of the report found that Microsoft’s products had more vulnerabilities than any other company. Since 1999, Microsoft products have had a total of 6,814 vulnerabilities. Here is the top 5:
- Microsoft: 6,814 vulnerabilities
- Oracle: 6,115 vulnerabilities
- IBM – 4,679 vulnerabilities
- Google: 4,572 vulnerabilities
- Apple – 4,512 vulnerabilities
But perhaps the most disturbing trend is that vulnerabilities have only increased in the past 20 years, as operating systems and other software become more complicated. In 1999, only 894 technical vulnerabilities were reported. This number has been multiplied by 14 to reach 12,174 technical vulnerabilities reported in 2019.