You can get the platform tools for Windows, Linux, or Mac direct from Google's servers. You get a ZIP file containing the platform tools folder with ADB, fastboot, and a few other tools.

On the smartphone, you will have to enable the USB debugging feature. Whereas, on your Windows PC, you will have to download and install the Android SDK Platform-Tools. What is Fastboot?

The droidsec security group has discovered and patched a buffer overflow issue and a lack of compile-time hardening in the Android Debug Bridge.