Software Vulnerabilities Are Being Weaponized Faster Than Ever
CyberSecurity Dive, Wednesday, February 25th, 2026
A report by VulnCheck shows threat groups are exploiting a small percentage of critical flaws well before security teams can mitigate.
Less than 1% of software vulnerabilities were exploited in the wild over the past year, but those flaws are being weaponized faster and on a larger scale than ever before, according to a report released Wednesday by VulnCheck.
Researchers tracked more than 14,400 exploits linked to about 10,500 unique CVEs in 2025, representing a 16.5% increase from the prior year. A large percentage of that increase was linked proof-of-concept code that was generated by AI.
Researchers cautioned that much of that AI-generated code was non-functional.