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Cybersecurity vocabulary · Vulnerabilities and Patching

Vulnerability

Meaning in cybersecurity, with examples

/ˌvʌlnərəˈbɪləti/nounCore term

In cybersecurity, vulnerability means: A weakness in software, hardware, a configuration or a process that an attacker could use to cause harm or to gain access they should not have.

In Turkish: zafiyet, güvenlik açığı, açık

How it is used

One of the most frequent words in security work. Vulnerabilities are discovered, reported, rated, patched and tracked. In speech people often shorten it to 'vuln'. A publicly known vulnerability usually gets a CVE ID and a severity score.

Example sentences

  1. The scanner found three critical vulnerabilities on the public web server.

  2. This vulnerability allows remote code execution, so it has to be patched this week.

Common collocations

  • critical vulnerability
  • known vulnerability
  • discover a vulnerability
  • patch a vulnerability
  • vulnerability management
  • exploitA piece of code or a technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability to make a system do something it was not designed to do.
  • patchA small update released by a vendor to fix a bug or close a security vulnerability in software, firmware or an operating system.
  • CVECommon Vulnerabilities and Exposures: a public catalogue that gives each publicly known vulnerability a unique ID, such as CVE-2021-44228.
  • zero-dayA vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no patch yet, so defenders have had 'zero days' to fix it when it is first exploited.
  • vulnerability scanAn automated check of systems, networks or applications that looks for known weaknesses, missing patches and insecure settings and lists them in a report.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Vulnerabilities and Patching

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