Zero Days: Understanding The Exploit

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31 Mar 2024

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Understanding why Zero Day Exploits are so devastating.

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If you’ve been following our series on Historical Hacks, you’ve probably noticed that through this series we’ve looked at an assortment of different viruses, worms and exploits. These exploits have been integral in allowing the attack to occur.

In today’s article, we’ll be taking a look at Zero Day exploits, talking about what makes them vulnerable and what risk they play for both individuals and nation-state hackers. We’ll also look at how they changed the world of hacking and cyber security, wreaking havoc on systems with little to no warning.\

What Is A Zero Day

A zero-day exploit refers to a cyber attack that takes advantage of a previously unknown vulnerability in software or hardware.

The term “zero-day” comes from the fact that developers have zero days to fix the flaw and protect users before attackers can exploit it.

Zero-day exploits are exceptionally damaging due to their ability to strike without warning and exploit vulnerabilities that are unknown to software developers.

Because these vulnerabilities are undisclosed and unpatched, attackers can exploit them to infiltrate systems, steal sensitive data, or launch other malicious activities before security measures can be implemented.

Unlike known vulnerabilities, zero-day exploits provide attackers with a significant advantage, as there is no existing defence mechanism in place to thwart their attacks. As a result, zero-day exploits can lead to devastating consequences for individuals, businesses, and even governments, including financial losses, reputational damage, and breaches of privacy.

Worse still, the impact of zero-day exploits can extend beyond immediate consequences, as they’ll typically undermine trust in technology systems and erode confidence in cybersecurity measures.

Zero-day exploits highlight the need for good cybersecurity practices and a proactive security posture for both individuals and organisations.

Lifecycle Of A Zero-Day

Discovery: Zero-day vulnerabilities are typically discovered by hackers, security researchers, or other individuals who identify weaknesses in software or hardware. These vulnerabilities may be found through rigorous security testing, reverse engineering, or by accident.

Exploitation: Once a zero-day vulnerability is discovered, attackers can exploit it to gain unauthorized access to systems, steal sensitive data, or carry out other malicious activities.
This often involves crafting exploit code or malware specifically designed to take advantage of the vulnerability.

Mitigation: After a zero-day exploit is detected, the affected software or hardware vendor may work quickly to develop and distribute a patch or update to fix the vulnerability. However, in the interim, users are at risk of being targeted by attackers until the patch is deployed and installed on their systems.

What Is The Risks?

Zero days, by their very nature, pose significant risks to data security and infrastructure and as such are used by a number of different threat actors. While you’ll often see nation-state actors using them as we mentioned above, hacktivists and cybercriminal groups will also use these exploits for various financial and ideological reasons as well.

While they are often used to conduct cyber attacks, you’ll also find that often these exploits can be used to breach data as well. Probably one of the best known of these breeches would be the Solarwinds attack which was uncovered in 2020. This attack was particularly damaging to trust as the attack used officially signed certificates to help perpetuate the attack.

Due to the fact that SolarWinds serviced a number of noteworthy government and commercial clients, the attack led to a significant amount of sensitive data being breached, including some from noteworthy US federal agencies like the Department of Defense and Homeland Security.

Uniquely Valuable

Probably one of the most interesting things about zero days that isn’t well known to the public is that these exploits have a significant value due to their uniqueness and the difficulty that comes with defending against attacks that incorporate them into their approach.

Because of this, on the dark web, we’ll find a healthy market for these exploits. While some of this activity is legitimate (security researchers will often research and look at these exploits) often we’ll find darker players wearing a black hat or possibly even a government-issued one instead.

The US-led Stuxnet attack is a great example of a state-level attack that incorporated a number of zero-day vulnerabilities and can be used as a resource to help understand how these factors can influence the overall success of a cyber attack.

Stuxnet targeted the Iranian Nuclear programs, including the Siemens PLC systems that were needed to enrich uranium. Source: Wikipedia.

How To Defend

Given the very essence of a zero-day attack is an attack vector that is not yet known, defending against such attacks can be quite difficult. However, there are some industry best practices we can use to help mitigate their impact should we be unfortunate enough to be caught in the midst of such an attack.

Things like patch management and endpoint detection can help by ensuring we’re running the latest software and can receive alerts should we have issues with our system. Threat Intelligence can give us advance warning of possible issues that may arise, and a well-thought-out incident response plan allows mitigation strategies to be implemented early. Finally, User Education and Awareness can assist in helping users to recognise malicious links and phishing approaches that may deliver Zero Day exploits.

Like many other threats in the cybersecurity world, good habits and prior planning can do much to offset the damage done by a targeted cyberattack. While neglecting to put these practices in place can increase your recovery time and risk sensitive data being breached.
Have you backed up your system and important information recently?

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