Cyber Risks · Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks

The State of Exploit Development: 80% of Exploits Publish Faster than CVEs

Summary: Unit 42 researchers analyzed 45,450 public exploits in Exploit Database and found that 80% of the exploits they studied were published before their CVEs, on average 23 days earlier. In a sample of 500 high-severity exploits since 2015, 14% were published before the patch, 23% in the first week after the patch, and 50% within the first month, with an exploit appearing on average 37 days after patch release.

Bottom line: The CVE is not the starting gun it is treated as: 80% of these exploits were already public before the CVE published, and 75% of the exploits in the database have no associated CVE at all, so a patch-priority queue keyed to CVE disclosure is working from a signal that arrives after the attack code.

Read the original at Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks ↗

Topics
Vulnerabilities & Patching
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