Adversaries may exploit vulnerabilities in security software, infrastructure, or defensive components to degrade, disable, or otherwise continue to impair their ability to prevent, detect, or respond to malicious activity. Adversaries may exploit a system or application vulnerability to directly interfere with defensive mechanisms. Exploitation occurs when an adversary takes advantage of a programming error in software, services, or the operating system to execute adversary-controlled code, often with the goal of weakening or disabling protections.

Vulnerabilities may exist in security tools such as antivirus, endpoint detection and response (EDR), firewalls, or other monitoring solutions. Adversaries may use prior reconnaissance or perform discovery activities (e.g., Software Discovery) to identify defensive tools present in an environment and target them for exploitation. Successful exploitation may allow adversaries to terminate security processes, disable protections, bypass enforcement mechanisms, or reduce the effectiveness of defensive controls.

In some cases, vulnerabilities in cloud-based or SaaS infrastructure may also be leveraged to bypass built-in security boundaries or disrupt visibility and enforcement across environments.