Briefly Discuss about Vulnerabilities

Hardware Vulnerabilities:

Hardware is more visible than software, largely because it is composed of physical objects. Because we can see what devices are hooked to the system, it is rather simple to attack by adding devices, changing them, removing them, intercepting the traffic to them or flooding them with traffic until they can go longer function. However, designers can usually put safeguards in place.

In particular deliberate attacks on equipment, intending to limit availability, usually involve theft or destruction. Managers of major computing centers long ago recognized these vulnerabilities and installed physical security systems to protect their machines.         

Software Vulnerabilities:

Computing equipment is of little use without the software that users expect. Software can be replaced, changed, or destroyed maliciously, or it can be modified, deleted, or misplaced accidentally. Whether intentional or not, these attacks exploit the software vulnerabilities.

Sometimes the attacks are obvious, as when the software no longer runs. More subtle are attacks in which the software has been altered but seems to run normally. Whereas physical equipment usually shows some mark of inflicted injury when its boundary has been breached the loss of a line of source or object code may not leave an obvious mark in a program.