The company will use the investment to scale operations and deepen intelligence and automation.
The post Nucleus Raises $20 Million for Exposure Management appeared first on SecurityWeek.
In this post we explore the data-driven shrinkage of the Time to Exploit (TTE) window from 745 days to just 44, and examine why N-day vulnerabilities have become the “turn-key” weapon of choice for modern threat actors.
Table Of ContentsThe race between defenders and threat actors has entered a new, more volatile phase: the rapidly accelerating exploitation of N-day vulnerabilities. Different from zero-days, N-day vulnerabilities are known security flaws that have been publicly disclosed but remain unpatched or unmitigated on an organization’s systems.
Historically, enterprises operated under the assumption of a “patching grace period,” the designated window of time allowed for a vendor to test and deploy a fix before a system is considered non-compliant or at high risk. However, this window is effectively collapsing, with Flashpoint finding that N-days now represent over 80% of all Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) tracked over the past four years.
The most sobering trend for security operations (SecOps) and exposure management teams is the dramatic reduction in Time to Exploit (TTE). In 2020, the average TTE, the time between a vulnerability’s disclosure and its first observed exploitation, was 745 days. By 2025, Flashpoint found that this window has now plummeted to an average of just 44 days.
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | |
| Average TTE | 44 | 115 | 296 | 405 | 518 | 745 |
This contraction represents a strategic shift in adversary tempo. Attackers are no longer waiting for complex, bespoke exploits; they are moving at breakneck speeds to weaponize public disclosures.
Adversaries have gained a significant advantage through the rapid weaponization of researcher-published Proof-of-Concept (PoC) code. When a fully functional exploit is released alongside a vulnerability disclosure, it becomes a “turn-key” solution for attackers. By combining these ready-made exploits with internet-wide scanning tools like Shodan or FOFA, even unsophisticated threat actors can conduct mass exploitation across large segments of the internet in hours.
A prime example of this path of least resistance approach was observed in the leaked internal chat logs of the BlackBasta ransomware group. Analysis revealed that of the 65 CVEs discussed by the group, 54 were already known KEVs. Rather than spending resources on original zero-day research, threat actors are simply leveraging known, yet unpatched and exploitable vulnerabilities for their campaigns.
The very software designed to protect enterprise firewalls, VPN gateways, and edge networking devices is consistently the most targeted category for both N-day and zero-day exploitation.
Because cybersecurity devices must be internet-facing to function, they provide a constant, unauthenticated attack surface. In 2025 alone, Flashpoint observed 37 N-days and 52 zero-days specifically targeting security and perimeter software. The requirement for these systems to remain open to external traffic means they will continue to be disproportionately targeted by advanced persistent threat (APT) groups and cybercriminals alike.
While tracking the “how” of an attack is critical, tracking who is responsible remains a fragmented challenge for the industry. Attribution is often hampered by naming fatigue, where different vendors assign their own designated unique monikers to the same actor. For instance, the widely known threat actor group Lazarus has over 40 distinct designations across the industry, including “Diamond Sleet,” “NICKEL ACADEMY,” and “Guardians of Peace”.
Despite these naming complexities, global activity patterns remain clear. China remains the most active nation-state actor in the vulnerability exploitation space, consistently outpacing Russia, Iran, and North Korea in both the volume and scope of their campaigns.
Why are organizations struggling to keep pace? The primary factor isn’t a lack of effort, but a lack of visibility.
The single greatest breakthrough an enterprise can achieve is not a new AI tool, but a complete asset inventory. Most large organizations are lucky to have an accurate inventory of even 25% of their total assets. Without knowing what you own, vulnerability scans can take days or weeks to return results that the adversary is already using to probe your network.
Most traditional security tools are CVE-dependent. However, thousands of vulnerabilities are disclosed every year that never receive an official CVE ID. These “missing” vulnerabilities represent a massive blindspot for standard scanners. Intelligence-led exposure management requires looking beyond the CVE ecosystem into proprietary databases like Flashpoint’s VulnDB, which tracks over 105,000 vulnerabilities that public sources miss.
To survive in an era where weaponization can happen in under 24 hours, organizations must shift from reactive patching to a threat-informed and proactive security approach. This means:
The goal of exposure management is to look at your organization through the adversary’s lens. By understanding which N-days threat actors are actually discussing and weaponizing in the wild, defenders can finally start to close the window of exposure before a potential compromise can occur.
Flashpoint’s vulnerability threat intelligence can help your organization go from reactive to proactive. Request a demo today and gain access to quality vulnerability intelligence that enables intelligence-led exposure management.
The post N-Day Vulnerability Trends: The Shrinking Window of Exposure and the Rise of “Turn-Key” Exploitation appeared first on Flashpoint.
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