Vulnerabilities in software become easier to exploit: Symantec

Prevention and containment of future security threats will be an extremely challenging task for most Internet security vendors, because the gap between announcement of a vulnerability and the release of an associated exploit is shrinking.

The latest Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) released by Symantec says that this trends ultimately suggest eminent "zero-day" threats. Which means such threats target vulnerabilities before they are announced and patches are made available.

ISTR is one of the most comprehensive analyses of trends in Internet threat activity done by Symantec Corp. The report´s findings are based on anonymous data from Symantec Managed Security Services customers as well as from 20,000 DeepSight Threat Management System registered sensors worldwide monitoring attack activity in more than 180 countries.

As per the report, in 2003, slightly more vulnerabilities were discovered than in 2002, with 2,636 vulnerabilities documented compared with 2,587 in 2002, averaging seven per day. The number of moderately severe vulnerabilities increased from an average of 98 per month in 2002 to an average of 115 per month in 2003. In addition, 70 percent of the vulnerabilities found in 2003 were classified as easy to exploit compared with 60 percent in 2002.

The majority of vulnerabilities with associated exploit code in 2002 and 2003 were classified as high-severity, with 175 in 2002 and 231 in 2003. The percentage of vulnerabilities for which exploit code was publicly available increased by 5% in 2003. The percentage of vulnerabilities that did not require specialized tools to exploit them increased by 6% in 2003. 

Client-side vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer are on the rise, from 20 in the first half of 2003 to 34 in the second half of the year­an increase of 70%. Many of these vulnerabilities allow attackers to compromise the systems of client users who visit web sites hosting malicious content, intentionally or not. The primary reason for concern over this trend is the massive market dominance of Internet Explorer. 

Says Gail Hamilton, Executive VP and GM, Symantec Global Services and Support, "The ISTR is one of the most accurate, comprehensive, and timely sources of security information available for helping companies assess and mitigate risk of cyber attacks now and in the future."

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