WeLiveSecurity.com

www.welivesecurity.com • July 16, 2026

Today we are happy to announce our annual report called Windows exploitation in 2015 . Readers who tracked our reports Windows exploitation in 2013 and Windows exploitation in 2014 may notice that in each new version of the report we try to highlight new security features introduced in Windows, web browsers and EMET. Along with this information, both reports contain information vulnerabilities that have been fixed in various important Windows components, the .NET Framework and Microsoft Office. Our latest report is no exception.

Our main goal in writing these reports is to notify our customers, as well as other users, the importance of installing updates to fix various unpatched (0day) vulnerabilities. We also provided information ESET's detections of in-the-wild exploits of these vulnerabilities. Such exploits are used by attackers to implement notorious drive-by download attacks.

The two reports we mentioned above and another research paper called Exploit Protection for Microsoft Windows give a comprehensive overview of various aspects of defensive and offensive technologies in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and EMET. This information is useful for end-users because it enables them to see, from a technical point of view, how attackers can achieve their goals and what methods have been introduced in Windows to help them to stay safe from such attacks. Below we list some of that content:

The new report includes the following information:

We didn't want to repeat information already provided in reports, and so in the new version of the report we concentrated on various security improvements in the listed products. The section Hacking Team summarizes detections of our AV products for exploits used by this cybergroup, as well as for their backdoor DaVinci (Morcut). This was developed for almost all existing platforms, including Windows, Android, Linux, OS X, iOS.

Artem Baranov, malware researcher, ESET Russia

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This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.

Analysis of Windows Exploitation Trends in 2015 ESET's annual report on Windows exploitation in 2015 reveals a significant increase in patched vulnerabilities, quadrupling from the previous year. The report highlights that Internet Explorer remained the most patched component, followed by User Mode Components. Key attack methods included drive-by downloads and Local Privilege Escalation (LPE). The report emphasizes the importance of timely updates to mitigate risks from unpatched vulnerabilities. ESET also discusses the emergence of exploits linked to the Hacking Team and the introduction of new security features in Microsoft products. The findings are crucial for users to understand the evolving threat landscape and the necessity of implementing security updates. 3 sources 55

Extracted Entities

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Extracted Entities

Attack Types (1)

Domains (1)

Malware (2)

MITRE ATT&CK (1)

Platforms (5)