On Mitigation of Modern Cybercrime Threats

As the infrastructure that humans heavily rely upon grows is dependent on modern technology and the Internet, the damage that can be done by exploiting vulnerabilities in these systems becomes more significant and worrisome. The extent of these threats’ possible impact cannot be overstated, as the amount of sensitive information stored in information systems and the actions that they are permitted to perform have been continuously heightening since the beginning of the information age. We present a review of representative examples of security incidents that had put a large number of such systems at risk of abuse, with many of them having withstood documented exploitation “in the wild”. We analyze the circumstances that lead to the presence of these security threats, as well as the way they were handled in terms of disclosure and urgent fixes to the affected software. Finally, we also suggest methods which could have possibly prevented these vulnerabilities or lowered their attack surface if they had been applied timely.