What is vulnerability

In computer security, the term vulnerability is applied to a weakness in a system which allows an attacker to violate the integrity of that system. Vulnerabilities may result from weak passwords, software bugs, a computer virus or other malware, a script code injection, or a SQL injection.

A security risk is classified as a vulnerability if it is recognized as a possible means of attack. A security risk with one or more known instances of working and fully-implemented attacks is classified as an exploit.

Constructs in programming languages that are difficult to use properly can be a large source of vulnerabilities.

Examples of vulnerabilities:

Common types of vulnerabilities include:

* Memory safety violations, such as:

• Buffer overflows

• Dangling pointers

* Input validation errors, such as:

• Format string bugs

• Improperly handling shell metacharacters so they are interpreted

• SQL injection

• Code injection

• E-mail injection

• Directory traversal

• Cross-site scripting in web applications

• HTTP header injection

• HTTP response splitting

* Race conditions, such as:

• Time-of-check-to-time-of-use bugs

• Symlink races

* Privilege-confusion bugs, such as:

• Cross-site request forgery in web applications

• Clickjacking

• FTP bounce attack

• Privilege escalation

*User interface failures, such as:

• Warning fatigue or user conditioning

• Blaming the Victim Prompting a user to make a security decision without giving the user enough information to answer it.

• Race Conditions
  

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