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A security exposure in an operating system or other system
software or application software component. Before the Internet became mainstream
and exposed every organization in the world to every attacker on the planet,
vulnerabilities surely existed, but were not as often exploited.
In light of this madness, mostly perpetrated against Microsoft, the
architecture of future operating systems has changed. Designing software to
be bulletproof against attacks is like building a house where every square
inch is fortified with steel and sensors that detect intrusions. Patching an
existing operating system written by hundreds of programmers who were not
dwelling on this issue when they wrote the code is an onerous job.
Security firms maintain databases of vulnerabilities based on version number
of the software. If exploited, each vulnerability can potentially compromise
the system or network. For a database of common vulnerabilities and
exposures, visit http://icat.nist.gov/icat.cfm.
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