Android suffered from 523 vulnerabilities in 2016

A report by The Inquirer points out that Google's Android operating system had the questionable honor of being the software with the most security flaws in 2016. A total of 523 Android operating system vulnerabilities were discovered last year, much more than the 319 found in runner-up Debian Linux. The third place was taken by Canonical's Ubuntu Linux with 278 security flaws, while the always-leaky Adobe Flash Player plug-in took the fourth spot with 266 bugs.

The fifth and sixth place is occupied by the Novell Leap and Opensuse operating systems, with 259 and 228 flaws, respectively. Adobe rounds out the top ten with Acrobat Reader DC, Acrobat DC and Acrobat DC, which saw 227, 227 and 224 flaws posted, respectively.

Apple ranks 11th with 215 flaws in Mac OS X and Microsoft can't be found until place 13, with 172 flaws in Windows 10.

These headline numbers do not tell the full story, though, it is the number of vulnerabilities by vendor tables that are really damning. Google does not top that list. Adobe does with 1383 vulnerabilities across 50 products, while Microsoft is second with 1325 per 50. Apple makes the list with 324 vulnerabilities, but this is more than half the issues that affected it in 2015.

Google meanwhile, is attributed with 698 issues across 50 products. Most of which probably relate to Android. While this is low in comparison to Adobe, it is more than double the amount reported in 2015, where Google was shamed 318 times.