Zero Day Attack!
It kind of sounds like the title of the next hit action movie,
but it's actually a special kind of software weakness that can end up causing big problems.
And we'd like to thank our friends at Bitdefender for sponsoring today's episode,
so we could tell you all about them. You see, it's called a zero day attack because it stems from a vulnerability no one knew about
until it was actually exploited. Kind of like the thermal exhaust port on the Death Star.
Except Jin Erso and her dad knew about that one.
Many times other types of software bugs are detected by the publisher before they get exploited,
giving developers time to come up with a patch. But a zero day attack is called that because the publisher knew about it for zero days.
It's like fortifying the crap out of the front of your house during the purge
and not realizing there's a basement window that you never used.
Oh no. So it's not surprising that zero day attacks tend to be devastating and high impact.
In fact, the famous Stuxnet worm that crippled Iran's nuclear weapons program back in 2010 was a zero day attack.
But how exactly do you defend against a security flaw that you don't even know is there?
One strategy developers like to use is finding any potential holes
that could open up the possibility of a buffer overflow and patching them.
A buffer overflow is simply a vulnerability that would allow one program to write data to another program's memory space.
Something that's typically not allowed by modern operating systems in order to keep a badly intentioned or misbehaving program
from crashing other parts of the computer.
It's only allowed to crash specific parts. Because bad actors often use buffer overflows to inject malicious code into a machine,
preventing them is an important way to stop zero day attacks.
And this is often accomplished through heuristic analysis found in anti-malware products.
This basically means anti-malware will look for suspicious code patterns
that might exploit attack vectors other zero day hacks have used.
So new viruses or vulnerabilities can be dealt with before human developers find out about them.
And crush them. But obviously these solutions aren't perfect.
So software companies often hire penetration testers and other so-called white hats
to find bugs in their own programs and report findings before the bad guys discover them.
But there's also quite an active marketplace for zero day attacks.
You see, you don't need to be directly employed by a software developer to go find zero day bugs.
Some companies run bug bounties in which you can get paid directly by big name tech firms
for finding holes in their products and telling their engineers about it.
Rather than, you know, using those vulnerabilities yourself for CD purposes.
Don't do that. However, there are also other companies that basically serve as marketplaces or brokers for zero day exploits.
These can end up paying quite a lot.
We're talking thousands or even millions of dollars if you find an exploit valuable enough.
But it may not always be clear who will be getting their hands on your findings.
It does appear though that buyers often end up being government organizations,
which I suppose in this day and age should surprise no one.
And of course there does exist a true black market for these exploits on the dark web
where they're simply sold to anyone with enough crypto.
Sounds like something out of Blade Runner or something.
In fact, part of the reason bounties from larger companies or brokers can be so high
is to encourage folks who uncover weaknesses to just report them.
Please, instead of selling them to an actual cyber criminal for a smaller payout.
So it does end up being possible to both do some good and earn a heap of cash if you know what you're doing.
Someone needs to tell the same thing to my ISP.
I know, so funny, right? Alright, that's it for this tech wiki. Thanks for watching guys.
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