According to a Wired report, Apple has hired a noted Windows hacker, Kristin Paget, to join the company's security team; a move which indicates that the recent Mac-directed malware attacks have prompted Apple to beef up its OS X safeguards.

As per the Wired report, Kristin Paget's task at Microsoft - where she was employed as Chris Paget, before undergoing a gender change in 2011 - was to work along with a small team of hackers entrusted with the task of finding security vulnerabilities in Windows Vista, prior to the OS' release to the public in 2007.

More recently, Paget was working as chief hacker with the Recursion Ventures security firm. Over the years, her accomplishments as a hacker include, among other things, the setting up of a cellphone call-intercepting station at the Defcon hacker conference as well as the creation of a long-range RFID identifier duplication device.

Though Paget has now been tapped by Apple to focus on security for OS X, there has been no official disclosure thus far about the responsibilities which Paget will shoulder at the company. However, her LinkedIn profile shows that she has been hired by the company as Core OS Security Researcher.

Given the fact that Paget has long been known as an expert hacker, the job which she will likely perform at Apple will largely be linked to malware protection, especially since Apple had to tackle the Flashback Trojan which infected more than half a million Mac systems earlier this year.