{"id":175283,"date":"2023-11-01T14:27:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T19:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/its-cheap-to-exploit-software-and-thats-a-major-security-problem"},"modified":"2023-11-01T14:27:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T19:27:19","slug":"its-cheap-to-exploit-software-and-thats-a-major-security-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/its-cheap-to-exploit-software-and-thats-a-major-security-problem","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Cheap to Exploit Software \u2014 and That\u2019s a Major Security Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/its-cheap-to-exploit-software-and-thats-a-major-security-problem2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>How much would it cost to hack your phone? The best guess for an iPhone is between $0 and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/09\/03\/technology\/nso-group-how-spy-tech-firms-let-governments-see-everything-on-a-smartphone.html\" target=\"_blank\">$65,000<\/a> \u2014 and that price mainly depends on you. If you skipped a really important security update, the cost is closer to $0.<\/p>\n<p>Say you were up to date. That $65,000 figure is an upper cost of exploiting the median individual \u2014 switch to an Android, a Mac, or a PC and it could get a lot lower. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/application-security\/apple-patches-3-zero-days-possibly-already-exploited\" target=\"_blank\">Apple has invested enormous resources<\/a> in hardening the iPhone. The asking price for an individual exploit, rather than as a service, can go <a href=\"https:\/\/techmonitor.ai\/technology\/cybersecurity\/apple-zero-day-vulnerability-android\" target=\"_blank\">as high as $8 million<\/a>. Compare that to the cost of an exploit of a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat \u2014 notoriously riddled with security vulnerabilities \u2014 which according to this <a href=\"https:\/\/documents.trendmicro.com\/assets\/pdf\/wp-the-rise-and-imminent-fall-of-the-n-day-exploit-market-in-the-cybercriminal-underground.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">TrendMicro research report<\/a> (PDF) is $250 and up.<\/p>\n<p>Switch from targeting a specific person to targeting any of the thousands of people at a large company and there are myriad ways in. An attacker only needs to find the cheapest one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much would it cost to hack your phone? The best guess for an iPhone is between $0 and $65,000 \u2014 and that price mainly depends on you. If you skipped a really important security update, the cost is closer to $0. Say you were up to date. That $65,000 figure is an upper cost [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,1512],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode","category-mobile-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}