Most Of The Zero-Day Exploits In 2024 Were Used By Government-Sponsored Hackers

When we think about hackers, we typically think about loners or hacker groups that live off the grid. We also think about people who would fear any governmental figure. However, there are hackers that are funded by the government. According to a new report, most of the zero-day exploits used in the wild were actually used by government-backed hackers.

You’ve probably heard about zero-day vulnerabilities. These are software vulnerabilities that aren’t known to the developers when they’re exploited. They can be pretty dangerous when exploited, as they can catch the developers by surprise.

Google just released a report on the number of zero-day vulnerabilities that were exploited last year, and there was a little bit of good news. The company revealed that the number of zero-day exploits dropped from 98 in 2023 to 75 in 2024. That’s a 23% drop. Of those 75 exploits, Google was able to attribute 34 of them. This means that the company was able to identify who performed the zero-day exploits were performed by.

It seems odd that a government would back hackers, but it happens. Sometimes, these are foreign governments backing hackers to infiltrate other governments. Of the 75 Exploits that Google reported, 23 of them were linked to government-backed hackers. That’s about 67%, which is scary. Among those 23, 10 of them were tied to hackers directly linked to their governments.

For all we know, the hackers involved in those exploits could have been responsible for some of the major hacks that happened in recent history. We’ve seen data breaches all throughout the year, with some of them happening within days of one another.

Along with those hackers, another eight exploits were from what are called CSVs (Commercial Surveillance Vendors). These are hackers and groups that typically work for governments exclusively.

Looking at the graph, we see that the majority of the exploits were performed by people tied to their governments. Five of them were from North Korea, another five were from China, and a few others include one from Russia and one from South Korea. What’s important to know is that this only includes the number of exploits spotted and attributed by Google. The real number could be much higher. Still, it’s shocking to know that there are so many state-sponsored hackers out there in the wild.