Zero-Day Attack & Prevention
A zero-day vulnerability is one that is unknown to security vendors and hence does not have a fix available. This indicates that hackers can use the vulnerability to access the vulnerable application's data. The term zero-day is used since the security vendor was aware of the vulnerability for zero-days and so has no patch for it. Zero-day is sometimes written as 0-day.
The terms vulnerability, exploit, and attack are frequently used in conjunction with zero-day, and it’s crucial to grasp the fundamental difference:
- 0-day vulnerability is one that is discovered by attackers before the vendor is aware of it. Because suppliers are unaware, there is no patch for zero-day vulnerabilities, making attacks more likely to succeed.
- 0-day exploit is a tactic used by hackers to target systems that have a previously unknown vulnerability.
- 0-day attack is the use of a zero-day exploit to inflict harm to or steal data from a vulnerable system.
Who is responsible for zero-day attacks?
Malicious actors that carry out zero-day attacks are classified according to their motivation. As an example:
- Cybercriminals: hackers whose primary objective is generally monetary gain.
- Hacktivists: hackers who are motivated by a political or social cause and want their attacks to be publicized in order to raise attention to their cause.
- Corporate espionage: hackers who spy on businesses in order to learn more about them.
- Cyberwarfare: governments or political entities spying on or assaulting the cyber infrastructure of another country.
Typical zero-day exploit targets include:
- Individuals who have access to important company information, such as intellectual property.
- Government departments.
- Large enterprises.
- Many home users utilize a susceptible system, such as a browser or operating system. Hackers can corrupt computers and create enormous botnets by exploiting flaws.
- Hardware devices, firmware and Internet of Things (IoT).
- In certain circumstances, governments employ zero-day vulnerabilities to target individuals, organizations, or nations that pose a danger to their natural security.
How to Protect against Zero-Day Attacks:
You completely cannot guard yourself against vulnerability since you are unaware of it. However, there are several procedures that may be taken to identify or reduce the probability of a zero-day attack:
- It is critical to keep the software up to date with the most recent updates and fixes.
- Do not open unknown attachments or URLs. Even if the content is from recognized individuals, caution should be exercised because there have been several instances when fraudsters have assumed the identity of a familiar person and distributed viruses or malware.
- Install a competent anti-virus programme to prevent such attacks.
- Use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protected websites (SSL).
- We are using open-source advisory to assist with efforts aimed at providing intelligence about future threats, like US Cert.
- Introducing a community-based bug reporting portal on your test environment application which is isolated from the prod environment.
- Avoid public information banners getting leaked, like Nginx headers.
- Use Web application firewalls to provide many layers of protection.
- With the aid of Virtual LANs, you may protect the content of individual communications.
- Use password-protected Wi-Fi wherever possible.
- Perform application penetration testing. This will assist you in identifying and repairing security flaws before hackers do.
Recent Zero-Day attacks:
- CVE-2022–28291 — Sensitive Information Disclosure in Tenable Nessus Scanner, May 2022
- CSW Zero Days | Reflected Cross-Site Scripting in WordPress, Mar 2022
- Stored cross-site scripting (XSS) in WordPress Microsoft Clarity Plugin, Oct 2021
- In August 2020, the zero-day vulnerabilities healthcare records application OpenClinic exposed patient test results.
- In August 2021, the zero-day vulnerability known as “PwnedPiper” impacted pneumatic tube systems used by hospitals to transport bloodwork, test samples, and medications
- Apache Log4j vulnerability, December 2021