Vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer have been found to be actively exploited for about 1 week out of every month, on average. The study from security journalist Brian Krebs focuses on zero day (unpatched) vulnerabilities – “IE users were
Vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer have been found to be actively exploited for about 1 week out of every month, on average. The study from security journalist Brian Krebs focuses on zero day (unpatched) vulnerabilities – “IE users were exposed to active attacks against unpatched, critical vulnerabilities for months at a time over the past year and a half”.
Logically, a zero day flaw is of most danger to users if it is being actively exploited in the wild e.g. by a malicious website to infect the user. Flaws which, although known and unfixed, are not being actively exploited simply do not present the same risk to the user (although they still need to be fixed quickly to prevent future exploitation).
IE Zero Day Flaws Actively Exploited – Brian concludes that, in the past 18 months, zero day flaws in IE were actively exploited for 152 days – about 5 months, based on Microsoft’s figures. On average then, users of IE were left at risk of zero day flaws (which were known to be actively exploited) for one week in every month. The study compared the corresponding 18 month period for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox:
Chrome – No disclosed vulnerabilities reported t