Vulnerability Exploitation: 3 Trends from Our Biannual Review

ReliaQuest's Q2–Q3 2023 analysis reports over 14,000 new vulnerability disclosures with 133 exploited in the wild (41% zero-days); non-zero-day vulnerabilities were typically exploited quickly (average 24.5 days), had an average CVSS base score of 8, and were predominantly low-complexity, remotely exploitable, and often exploitable without authentication. The report recommends prioritizing patching for internet-facing and high-risk assets, maintaining accurate asset inventories, and strengthening defenses (edge hardening, network segmentation, EDR/logging) to reduce rapid exploitation risk.