How to Handle Vulnerabilities

What's a zero-day exploit? "Zero-Day exploits are released before, or on the same day the vulnerability - and, sometimes, the vendor patch - are released to the public. The term derives from the number of days between the public advisory and the release of the exploit," as Wikipedia says.

Symantec provides similar information of the phrase adding that "we have recently seen an increase in the number of zero-day exploits, which indicates that attackers are being more methodical in their discovery and use of software vulnerabilities.

A zero-day exploit occurs when a software flaw is only discovered after it is already being exploited in the wild (and there isn't a patch available from the vendor)."

Most users are trying to combat the security holes and vulnerabilities using security solutions that are meant to assure the protection of the system. But, even with these applications, we're still vulnerable because until the moment the antivirus receives information, the virus can affect us.

"Our strategy is to protect a new vulnerability against any future attacks in the form of broader coverage focusing on the one vulnerability, instead of having to reactively respond to every specific exploit. This approach protects against both known and unknown attempts to exploit that vulnerability.

Users can deploy one signature that protects against many different attacks. To complement intrusion prevention signatures that focus on the network vector, antivirus signatures block the file-based attacks," Mimi Hoang, Symantec employee, sustained.