Vulnerabilities
Vulnerability
Also known as: Security weakness, Security flaw
Definition
A weakness in a system, application, or process that an attacker can exploit to violate confidentiality, integrity, or availability.
Examples
- An unpatched library with a known CVE that allows remote code execution.
- A misconfigured S3 bucket exposing customer data publicly.
Related terms
CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures)
A public catalogue that assigns a unique identifier to each disclosed software or hardware vulnerability so they can be referenced unambiguously across the industry.
CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration)
A community-developed taxonomy of software and hardware weakness types — the underlying flaw classes that lead to vulnerabilities.
CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System)
An open framework, maintained by FIRST, that produces a 0–10 severity score for a vulnerability based on its exploitation characteristics and impact.
Exploit
A piece of code, data, or technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability to cause unintended behaviour such as code execution, privilege escalation, or information disclosure.
Zero-Day Vulnerability
A security flaw that is unknown to the vendor (or for which no patch yet exists) at the moment it is discovered or exploited.
Vulnerability Assessment
A systematic review of an environment to identify, classify, and prioritize security weaknesses, typically without active exploitation.