Zero Day Vulnerabilities

In today’s era of technology, many breakthroughs have surfaced. Most of these advances have benefited us in previously unimaginable ways. Some of those advances include; text messaging, social media and smartphones. These advances have changed the way many people operate. Although these tech feats have changed the way people interact and communicate with each other, most people overlook the complications that can occur with how simplified our lives have become. Furthermore, people have to remember that all applications and other man-made projects are subject to error. It can be suggested that “Zero-day” vulnerabilities present a threat to people in everyday life. Today many people feel content with the technology around them because it creates

Roughly three years, nuclear weapon researchers were targeted by zero-day vulnerability attacks. “The exploit caused vulnerable Windows machines to be compromised by "Poison Ivy," a notorious backdoor trojan that had been modified so it was detected by only two of 46 major antivirus programs.” (Goodin)
After this event occurred many government officials began to increase the security of their databases. What is puzzling to most people is that many of the systems people believe are secure really are not. To conclude, Zero day vulnerabilities present threats to people in everyday life. Evidence of these events are the Samsung remote tracking exploit which allows a user to be tracked without even knowing. This is a threat to the average person in society, because the attacker would know the person’s location all the time based on exploiting Samsung’s tracking technology. Furthermore, these vulnerabilities present a window of opportunity, however, people do not know whether a person will do the right thing. For example, announcing the vulnerability so it is patched and is no longer a liability for anyone or the discoverer could keep the knowledge of the vulnerability for their own personal uses. I believe zero-day vulnerabilities are one of the greatest threats that we as individuals face