Zero Day Exploits

We're now at very uncommon attacks. One uncommon attack although it is rare is called a "Remote Execution Exploit". Meaning that an attacker can run code on your computer without consent of the user. These exploits can install viruses that can then steal data, activate cameras and microphones, lots of nasty stuff.

These are rare for a hacker to find, and if a hacker does find one and uses it maliciously they likely won't be for much longer. Governments love to give hackers of this caliber a choice, work for the government or go to jail for the rest of your life. Obviously working for the government pays better.

There are some "White Hat" hackers who find these and don't use it maliciously, and report the exploit so that web-browsers can patch the exploit. There is a constant war between the "White Hats" and "Black Hats" creating and patching exploits in software.

In fact, the United States have employed people to exploit Tor, and other letter agencies are employing people to actively make Tor more secure because they use Tor!

There are ways to mitigate Zero Day Exploits, using Tails in a virtual machine is one of them. By running it in a virtual machine, even if there is a remote exploit bug in the Tor Browser an attacker also now has to break out of the virtual machine with a separate remote exploit bug. This adds another layer of protection.

If you use Linux or FreeBSD for your system, there is a similar solution using Docker on Linux systems and Jails on FreeBSD systems. This is a soft virtualization solution as compared to hard virtualization solutions like VMWare and Virtualbox.