IBM X-Force 2011 Trend and Risk Report: Application security vulnerabilities are down. Bad guys are targeting more niche IT loopholes and emerging technologies such as social networks and mobile devices. Social networking may be an emerging thing in the grand scheme of the universe, but attacks against it are hugely successful these days. Attacks targeting Shell Command Injection vulnerabilities rose 2 to 3 times, as the number of. vulnerabilities in publicly maintained. web applications dropped by 46 percent this year this year, report says. The number of exploits publicly released that can be used to target mobile devices increased 19 percent.”]