[vuhl-ner-uh-buh
l] 
| 1. | capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt, as by a weapon: a vulnerable part of the body. |
| 2. | open to moral attack, criticism, temptation, etc.: an argument vulnerable to refutation; He is vulnerable to bribery. |
| 3. | (of a place) open to assault; difficult to defend: a vulnerable bridge. |
| 4. | Bridge. having won one of the games of a rubber. |
| vul·ner·a·ble (vŭl'nər-ə-bəl) adj.
[Late Latin vulnerābilis, wounding, from Latin vulnerāre, to wound, from vulnus, vulner-, wound; see welə- in Indo-European roots.] vul'ner·a·bil'i·ty, vul'ner·a·ble·ness n., vul'ner·a·bly adv. |
vulnerability security
A bug or feature of a system that exposes it to possible attack, a flaw in the system's security.
A common example of a vulnerability due to a bug is buffer overrun, where carefully constructed input can allow an attacker to insert arbitrary code into a running program and have it executed.
The most serious vulnerabilities are those in network software, especially if they exploit traffic that is allowed through the firewall like HTTP, for example exploiting a bug in a web browser.
The Open Source Vulnerability Database lists many vulnerabilities.
(2007-12-02)