Perspectives and Reviews in the Development and Evolution of the Zero-Day Attacks

Zero-day attacks are among the most dangerous security incidents affecting both home users and corporate environments. Since 2021 broke the record for zero-day attacks, this study will present the state-of-the-art by clarifying the concept and giving a detailed analysis of the field. Unknown threats such as zero day or unknown malware software usually avoid traditional antivirus or antimalware protection solutions. This type of cyberattack disrupts the activity of companies, causing loss of time and money or compromising confidential data. By their nature, antivirus signatures cannot stop unknown threats. New and old security vendors claim that their "next generation" solutions use signature-based detection based on revolutionary technologies such as machine learning to identify zero-day attacks. Despite captivating stories and tempting words, the effectiveness of these solutions is unscientific, and it is rarely supported by reliable sources. The results of this paper will present the development of different well-known attacks by analyzing their evolution.