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A security bug or security defect is a software bug that can be exploited to gain unauthorized access or privileges on a computer system. Security bugs introduce security vulnerabilities by compromising one or more of:
Security bugs do not need be identified nor exploited to be qualified as such and are assumed to be much more common than known vulnerabilities in almost any system.
Security bugs, like all other software bugs, stem from root causes that can generally be traced to either absent or inadequate:[2]
Security bugs generally fall into a fairly small number of broad categories that include:[3]
See software security assurance.