Smarter 'Blended Threats' Replacing Simple Viruses How Vulnerable Are We? Sharon Gaudin
How Vulnerable Are We?
"On the silver-lining side," Vincent says, "while we've documented a dramatic growth in vulnerabilities over the past several years, the rate of that increase has started to slow down a little bit." Calendar year 2003 saw only 49 more reported software vulnerabilities than 2002 — 2,636, as opposed to 2,587. That averaged out to seven new vulnerabilities discovered every day.
But that's where the good news ends. Vincent notes that of those 2,636 vulnerabilities, 70 percent were classified as easy to exploit — up from 60 percent the year before. The study also shows that the number of moderately severe vulnerabilities increased from an average of 98 per month to an average of 115 per month.
"That's a really big concern," he adds.
Client-side vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer are on the rise, climbing from 20 in the first half of 2003 to 34 in the second half of the year — an increase of 70 percent. 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.
