Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and the latest edition of Mac OS X, 10.6 or Snow Leopard, does include malware protection.

While not saying it in quite those terms, Symantec released its latest Internet Security Threat Report on Tuesday, stating that "malicious activity continues to grow at a record pace." Certainly, those watching the activity surrounding Conficker might agree that things are somewhat risky out there.

Hackers have already jumped on the earlier good news about Conficker detectors for networked PCs, and have poisoned search engine results to point to malware rather than the detection tools themselves.