Here’s How Hackers Are Exploiting New Vulnerabilities Within Minutes

Cyber attacks are at an all-time high, and hackers have become more efficient than ever. Attackers are capable of moving faster than anyone when speaking of scanning vulnerability announcements from software publishers. They can scan for vulnerabilities in just 15 minutes once they are announced, according to Palo Alto’s 2022 Unit 42 Incident Response Report.

As per a report from Bleeping Computer, hackers constantly check software vendor bulletin boards where vulnerabilities are announced in the form of CVEs. It enables attackers to exploit these details and infiltrate an organization’s network. It also allows them to spread malicious code remotely.

Patching Loopholes Before Hackers Find Them

“The 2022 Attack Surface Management Threat Report found that attackers typically start scanning for vulnerabilities within 15 minutes of a CVE being announced,” Palo Alto’s Unit 42’s blog post reads.

With hackers spreading their roots in every nook and corner of the internet and becoming faster than ever, it takes them only a few minutes to spot weak targets. Their job gets easier if they have a report that details the vulnerability.

In simple words, system admins will be required to boost their process of identifying security loopholes and patch them before cyber attackers find a way to exploit these loopholes.

Amateur Hackers Can Also Be Dangerous

The report also sheds light on how scanning doesn’t need a hacker to have highly-sophisticated skills to cause damage. Anyone with a basic understanding of scanning CVEs can search on the internet and disclose vulnerable endpoints. They can sell this information on the dark web to people who know how to use that information to their benefit.

Unit 42’s report highlighted CVE-2022-1388, an unauthenticated command execution vulnerability that was causing problems to F5 BIG-IP products. Just within 10 hours of its announcement, around 2,500 scanning and exploitation attempts were made by hackers.

Cyber attacks involving malware and hackers have grown multifold in the past few months. Hacker groups and individual threat actors have managed to plant malicious code onto motherboards that can be hard to detect and remove.