Most Exploited Vulnerabilities in the Year 2022
The most exploited vulnerabilities in the year 2022 are known as CVEs. These vulnerabilities allow bad actors to perform various attacks, including stealing credentials, gaining access to networks, downloading malware, and stealing information from devices. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most exploited vulnerabilities in the year 2022. This information will help you better protect your system. However, before we get into these vulnerabilities, we need to look at the history of these types of vulnerabilities.
Injection attacks: The term “injection” refers to an attack in which the attacker sends data to a web application, which then performs a malicious action. Some examples of this include SQL injection flaws, operating system injection flaws, and lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) injection vulnerabilities. In addition to these vulnerabilities, the latest OWASP Top 10 list also includes A04:2017 – XML External Entities (XXE) attacks. These attacks are especially widespread due to the wide use of Log4j in web applications. Organizations were surprised to discover their dependency on the Log4j library.
The Log4Shell vulnerability emerged when details of the bug surfaced, and the responsible organizations scrambled to understand the extent of exposure and release patches as quickly as possible. However, the early attempts to patch the bug failed, and this vulnerability is now on the list of the most exploited vulnerabilities. While these early efforts to patch this bug have reduced the risks, many organizations have not yet taken appropriate action to protect themselves.
The Most Exploited Vulnerabilities in the Year 2022
The ZeroLogon bug – a new security vulnerability which was discovered a month after Microsoft patched it – is also included on the CISA Top 10 List of Most commonly exploited vulnerabilities. This bug is based on a cryptographic flaw in the MS-NRPC protocol. Unauthenticated attackers can use the zerologon bug to log into servers. This bug was widely exploited last year, and has been deemed critical by the CISA.
Several of the most exploited vulnerabilities in the year 2022 were zero-days. Zero-day vulnerabilities are those that affect a large number of platforms, including Linux, Apple iOS, and Atlassian Confluence. These zero-day vulnerabilities are critical to many organizations and can lead to the compromise of important information. As a result, they are critical and should be patched as soon as possible. However, while a number of applications and platforms are vulnerable, a large portion are not yet patched.
CVE-2022 is a serious vulnerability affecting VMware’s vSphere server virtualization products. Its ESXi hypervisor is typically located on an internal network and is widely exploited by malicious actors. Using the exploitable CVE-2021-21972 vulnerability, a malicious actor can gain access to these servers and execute commands with unrestricted privileges. Mass scanning for vulnerable VMware vCenter servers began shortly after the vulnerability was discovered. Mitigation measures were published in an advisory and Proof of Concept code.
CVE-2022-26134 is a critical security vulnerability in Atlassian’s Confluence Server and Data Center products. Without proper authentication credentials, an attacker can execute arbitrary code. Atlassian patched the vulnerability after it was publicly exploited in the wild, but the patched version is still widely exploited. To prevent an exploit, organizations should block all traffic to these vulnerable devices. Affected versions should be upgraded.