Summary

Armed with enough information from the reconnaissance phase, hackers will have an easier time finding the right attacks to use to compromise systems. This chapter has looked at several methods that hackers are utilizing to attack computing devices.

In many instances, vulnerabilities have been primarily targeted to allow hackers to breach into otherwise secured systems. Zero-day vulnerabilities have been particularly effective against many targets. These are vulnerabilities that have no existing patches, thus making it significantly harder for any targeted system to be secured. There has been an alarming number of zero-day vulnerabilities discovered due to the efforts of security researchers, hackers, and state agencies to discover exploitable flaws in systems.

A lot more focus has been paid to mobile phones. While they are the most widespread computing devices, they also happen to be the least secure. This gives hackers a large number of easily exploitable targets and...