BENGALURU: Cyber attackers are infiltrating networks and evading detection by hijacking the infrastructure of major corporations and using it against them besides exploiting vulnerabilities within a very short time, a security and anti-virus company said.

"Attackers don't need to break down the door to a company's network when the keys are readily available," Tarun Kaura, director of technology sales of Symantec India, said.

"We're seeing attackers trick companies into infecting themselves by trojanizing software updates to common programmes and patiently waiting for their targets to download these - giving attackers unfettered access to the corporate network," he said.

In a research conducted by the company, it was revealed that it took software companies an average of 59 days to create and roll out patches -- up from only four days in 2013.

"Attackers took advantage of the delay and... leapt to exploit the vulnerability within four hours. There were 24 'zero-day' vulnerabilities discovered in 2014, leaving an open playing field for attackers to exploit known security gaps before they were patched," it said.

A zero-day vulnerability refers to a hole in software that is unknown to the vendor. This security hole is then exploited by hackers before the vendor becomes aware and hurries to fix it -- this exploit is called a zero day attack.

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