More than 20 percent more vulnerabilities were attacked last year.
The number of active attacks on known security vulnerabilities reached record levels last year.
According to research from VulnCheck, 2024 saw a total of 768 CVE-listed vulnerabilities come under fire from threat actors in the wild. That figure is a 20 percent increase from 2023, when 639 vulnerabilities were actively attacked.
“2024 marked another banner year for threat actors targeting the exploitation of vulnerabilities,” Vulncheck said in its report. “Exploitation disclosures came from various sources, including product companies, security vendors, government agencies, non-profits, and media outlets worldwide.”
Perhaps more concerning was the finding that nearly a quarter of those attacks came prior to the vulnerability having a CVE entry released, making it a zero day flaw. VulnCheck found that 23.6 percent of the attacks it observed matched that criteria.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
