According to a record by means of knowledge safety corporate Mandiant, a Google-owned corporate, researchers tracked 55 zero-day vulnerabilities in 2022. Zero-day vulnerabilities are safety flaws in tool which might be publicly disclosed/ exploited earlier than it turns into identified to the corporate answerable for its patching.
It is because of this that hackers take advantage of those vulnerabilities as a result of there are not any protections or firewalls in position to mitigate the assault.
Which corporate used to be hit probably the most
Researchers mentioned that hackers exploited 18 zero-day vulnerabilities in merchandise by means of Microsoft, 10 in Google, 9 in Apple, and 18 in others.
“The applied sciences maximum ceaselessly suffering from zero-days in 2022 replicate a equivalent distribution as years prior and once more overwhelmingly focal point at the 3 biggest distributors whose era is broadly followed the world over. Microsoft (18), Google (10), and Apple (9) have been probably the most recurrently exploited distributors for the 3rd yr in a row,” Mandiant said.
Which product type was exploited the most
The most exploited products were operating systems (OS) (19), followed by browsers (11), security, IT, and network management products (10), and mobile OS (6).
Desktop operating systems were exploited the most with 19 zero vulnerabilities. Windows had 15 zero-day flaws, followed by macOS with four.
In the case of mobile OS, out of six zero-day vulnerabilities, five were exploited in iOS and one in Android.
When it comes to web browsers, Chrome was most exploited with nine zero-day vulnerabilities (out of 11), compared to Firefox’s two.
China lead zero-day exploitation record
The record mentioned that the Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage teams exploited maximum zero-day vulnerabilities in 2022, which is in step with the former years. China used to be adopted by means of North Korean and Russian cyber espionage actors.
In 2022, Chinese espionage teams exploited seven zero-day vulnerabilities and two each and every by means of North Korean and Russian actors.