Vulnerability exploitation: the problem of protecting our weakest links
Steven Furnell · Computer Fraud & Security · 2003
A security issue that has become very prominent in recent years is the exploitation of vulnerabilities in operating systems and application programs. Many attacks against systems, by both hackers and malicious software, now begin with a foothold being established through a known vulnerability in the target system and the software that it is running. Although the problem of vulnerabilities has always been with us, evidence suggests that the scale has significantly increased in recent years. For example, figures from the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC) suggest that 4129 vulnerabilities were reported during 2002 — representing almost a tenfold increase when compared to 19991.