McAfee is predicting hard times in 2008 for Vista. The operating system is approaching the 10-percent Market penetration mark, which will make the system more attractive to malware authors and hackers.

The company predicts that Vista will cross over the 10-percent threshold sometime in 2008, increasing the financial incentive for malware authors to devote more attention to the product. Malware authors are driven largely by financial gains, and don't devote attention to software products and operating systems until it's financially attractive to do so. Vista currently holds about 8 percent of the OS market.

McAfee's Avert Labs predicts that 40-45 vulnerabilities in Vista will be uncovered in 2008. In the first nine months of availability, nineteen vulnerabilities were discovered. This compares to 16 vulnerabilities discovered in Windows XP during its first nine months on the market. As the number of installations increased in the following twelve months, the number of known vulnerabilities in XP more than doubled.