Security News > 2021 > July > Explosion of 0-day exploits: The bad news and the good news

Have you noticed that lately we've been hearing more about in-the-wild attacks exploiting 0-day vulnerabilities? "Halfway into 2021, there have been 33 0-day exploits used in attacks that have been publicly disclosed this year - 11 more than the total number from 2020," researchers with Google's Threat Analysis Group have pointed out in a recent blog post.

TAG analysts Maddie Stone and Clement Lecigne have shared information about several attack campaigns exploiting 0-day vulnerabilities that TAG discovered this year, and in some of them they believe the 0-day exploits were sourced from the same commercial surveillance company.

Two campaigns exploiting two Chrome zero-days have lured Armenian targets to attacker-controlled domains that fingerprinted their devices to see whether they can be targeted with the exploits and, if they could, the exploits would be automatically delivered.

Google's analysts believe that part of the reason we're hearing more about attacks using 0-day exploits are improvements in detection and a growing culture of disclosure.

The demand for 0-day exploits has created a lucrative market for private companies that sell 0-day capabilities for legal surveillance purposes, and those end up in the hands and repertory of government-backed actors.

On the whole an increased detection of 0-day exploits is a good thing for IT companies, they say: the vulnerabilities get fixed, and the companies can learn to get better at preventing and fighting exploitation.

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