Microsoft products continue to be most targeted by cybercriminals

2019 was the third year in a row that Microsoft technology was most affected by vulnerabilities, with eight of the top 10 vulnerabilities identified targeting its products.

This is a key finding of the Recorded Future annual vulnerability report which also shows that for the first time six of the vulnerabilities, all impacting Microsoft, were repeats from the prior year.

CVE-2018-8174 dropped one spot from the top exploited vulnerability in 2018 to second in 2019; CVE-2017-11882 stayed in the third spot, while CVE-2012-0158 dropped from ninth to tenth. Only one new vulnerability from the 2019 calendar year was ranked in the top 10 that impacted Internet Explorer 10 and 11: CVE-2019-0752. This vulnerability was included in a new exploit kit called Capesand.

Capesand targeted four of the top 10 vulnerabilities and is interesting because almost all its functions are derived from open source code. Overall though the number of new exploit kits appearing declined, dropping from five to four. The volume of dark Web discussions of exploit kits also dropped significantly in 2019.

In 2019, 23 new remote access Trojans (RATs) were released compared to 37 in 2018. Only one of these, BalkanRAT, was associated with a top vulnerability that impacted Microsoft WinRAR ACE: CVE-2018-20250.

Despite the focus on Microsoft products, the top exploited vulnerability CVE-2018-15982 targets Adobe Flash Player, as does the only other non-Microsoft vulnerability in the top 10.

Patches for all of the top 10 vulnerabilities are available and Recorded Future recommends that users prioritize apply these in order to protect their technology stacks.

You can read more and get hold of the full report on the Recorded Future blog.

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