Detection Deficit: A Year in Review of 0-days Used In-The-Wild in 2019
Summary: Project Zero's year-in-review found 20 zero-days detected and disclosed as exploited in the wild in 2019, with 11 of them in Microsoft products and 10 of those 11 targeting legacy software such as Windows 7 or Internet Explorer. The team concluded that the community's ability to detect in-the-wild zero-days is severely lacking, and that the data is skewed by detection bias because Microsoft's ecosystem has the most detection tools and third-party coverage.
Bottom line: The steady year-over-year count of detected zero-days cannot be read as a stable threat level, because the spreadsheet records only exploits that were caught, not those that were used; a single researcher, Clément Lecigne of Google's TAG, is credited with 7 of the 21 detected zero-days across 4 platforms, which shows how thin the detection bench is.
Read the original at Google Project Zero ↗
- Topics
- Zero-Days & Exploits
- Related
- New Sign Drop Exploit Can Abuse Windows Defender to Bypass Security Protections Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026New Sign Drop Zero-Day Exploit Turns Windows CLFS Security Feature Into SYSTEM Access Cyber Risks · Nov 12, 2026November Patch Tuesday: An Overflowing Cornucopia of CVEs Cyber Risks · Nov 10, 2026