Google, Oracle less secure than Microsoft?

Google and Oracle have overtaken Microsoft as the vendors with the most vulnerabilities

Google took out the top spot, with Trend Micro speculating that it may be due to the growing popularity of the company's Chrome browser and the short cycles between product releases, which limit how much bug testing can be done. It was ranked second, behind Microsoft in the second quarter of 2011.

Oracle rose to second place for this quarter. Trend Micro stated that it was likely that the2009 acquisition of Sun Micro-systems and its Java products by Oracle had caused the latter's code-base to become large and complicated to maintain, contributing to the rise in exploitable bugs. Oracle was ranked fifth in the previous quarter.

Microsoft, which dropped to third place from first, has stayed relatively quiet over the last couple of months with few security blunders making headlines. Instead, it has been playing a different security game of its own, handing the Rustock botnet case to the FBI, halting the Kelihos botnetand cracking down on scammers. The biggest Microsoft news over the last quarter has largely been for matters unrelated to security such as its Skype purchase, the impending release of Windows 8 and the Mango update for Windows Phone 7.

Apple, which didn't even reach the top 10 in Trend Micro's last quarter report, is now ranked fourth, even though it has seen a number of security issues recently, including PDF security holesand running unsigned code on iOS.

Trend Micro's report also covered the most notable security attacks, scams, breaches and exploits that had occurred in the past quarter, such as the DroidDreamLight Android malware, the Justin Bieber video scam that affected LinkedIn users and the US losing its place on the list of top 10 spammers.