what do “hackers” mean by finding a “vulnerability”. It’s hard to understand how there can be a gap in code that grants that much access.

Question

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**Thank you guys for all the great answers I am enlightened. Computers are fascinating to me so this is a real treat!

In: 1007

Answer 1

As a programmer I’m sometimes amazed things work at all (sorta /s). Most try their best but it turns out trying to tell a 3 year old how to do something in very detailed steps can be difficult. The different tools we use to make the software have different trade offs like making it faster but harder to get right and it isn’t uncommon for assumptions made at one point and time to change due to the world changing and then bam hackers exploit that to force the system to do something the software wasnt meant to do. Not to mention that most software is used by people and people are easily tricked.

Basically everything around software is complex and we have to be extra diligent as hackers only need to find one way through while we have to be mindful of everything.