Anti-virus Products Struggle Against Exploits
Summary: NSS Labs tested 10 commercial anti-virus products against 123 client-side exploits targeting Internet Explorer, Firefox, Adobe Flash, Reader and Apple QuickTime, and found an average detection rate of 76 percent against original exploits and 58 percent against exploit variants. Only three of the ten products stopped all of the original exploits, and NSS President Rick Moy said most vendors appear to focus on detecting the malware delivered by exploits rather than blocking the exploits themselves.
What's compelling: Roughly half the exploits tested were exact copies of publicly published exploit code, and some had sat on a government-funded site for months - so the gap is not about unknown threats but about coverage the products should already have. Moy's point that there are far fewer exploits than malware samples means the earliest stage of an attack is the cheapest place to break the chain, and it is the stage most of these products leave open.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Zero-Days & Exploits
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