Vulnerabilities and malware

There's a flow here that most people may not be aware of and it all starts with software developers. Nearly all software applications can contain vulnerabilities, especially as they grow and become more complex. They aren't intentional; rather, unintended flaws exist due to any number of reasons, including improper coding implementation, configuration issues, and even just bad coding standards. These vulnerabilities, if left unaddressed, can be exploited and not necessarily directly by threat actors.

Vulnerabilities and exploits

Vulnerability identification is crucial for the attack chain to begin as often, the initial entry is through exploiting a vulnerability in a software application. To be clear here, as it pertains to malware, the vulnerability exists in the software application and a threat actor exploits the vulnerability to gain access or get privilege escalation to execute malware. The act of doing this is called exploitation.

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