At least three proof-of-concept viruses have been created by hackers as they stumble upon undocumented vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, Apple's rival to the Windows operating system.

The discoverer of the latest exploit harbours deep antipathy towards Apple's feelgood attitude around security.

“I do believe in being responsible and working with vendors, but I also feel that some vendors need to be treated like children and learn lessons the hard way," said Infosec Sellout.

“Apple has a very long way to go when dealing with security issues in their products.”

Although Apple has been diligent in patching holes in Mac OS X as they are found, the recent success of the company has brought so much attention that some of it has been of the unwelcome kind.

A series of bugs have been discovered by independent researchers affecting such key components as QuickTime, the video technology created by Apple.

Another factor causing this interest in Mac security may be the decision by the company's leader Steve Jobs to switch from using PowerPC chips to those made by Intel -- the same silicon used in rival Windows machines.

When Macs used PowerPC chips, the number of hackers able to manipulate the silcon at the most basic level would have been comfortably small.

But the switch to Intel means that a global army of budding virus writers familiar with their chips due to experience writing Windows viruses have a new hobby.

The key insight for the successful virus author is realising a strategy to fool a computer processor so that anti-virus software can't detect the malicious software they wish to deploy.

As it stands, these virii only exist 'in the lab' -- but a truly sophisticated piece of malware may already be out there in the wild.

In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, the first true Mac OS X virus could very well be one of those 'unknown unknowns.'