How about 31 bugs?

2007 was kicked off with two independent security researchers, Kevin Finisterre and his accomplice who goes by the pseudonym LMH, publishing details of a flood of security vulnerabilities in Apple’s products.

Known as the “Month of Apple Bugs” and modeled after July’s “Month of the Browser Bugs” and November’s “Month of Kernel Bugs”, the project discloses a new security hole each day in January in Apple’s OS X operating system and the applications that run on top of it.

Some experts and users have questioned the purpose of these projects, debating whether these Month of ‘X’ Bugs are helping security or hurting it. Finisterre and LMH argue that:

Flaws that are publicly disclosed will get fixed quickly.

InformationWeek editor, Larry Greenemeier, explored security researchers’ practices at length, exposing the risks they create but ultimately concluding it’s a necessary price to pay for good software. In the long run, this kind of activity will keep Apple on its toes and will help improve its quality assurance.

The lesson is not that software has bugs. Rather, the point to be taken by developers is that defects removed during the development process won’t come back and haunt the team later — when discovered during regular use or by the researchers dedicated to making software safer.