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

I like the existing explanations and I’ll add a little bit of context: All major operating system kernels (Linux, Windows, iOS/macOS) are written in C (sometimes with a bit of C++). C is a great language in many respects, but it was designed in the 1970s and lacks the security related features of modern languages.

Computer hardware itself, like RAM chips, can have vulnerabilities too. There was a crazy hack a few years ago called Rowhammer that exploited those issues.

USB and FireWire had security issues where hackers could root (take over) a computer via a memory stick.

The gist of it is that there are security issues from the chips to the kernels to the applications and even the network protocols. There are millions of lines of code involved so eyeballing it isn’t really sufficient to create secure systems.

Unlike, say, a refrigerator, a computer is designed to be extensible via software and networkable with every other computer in the world. This makes them very hard to protect.