Have you heard of the term Zero-Day before? You may have, but do you know what all a Zero-Day flaw entails? The term itself isn’t very complicated to understand once you know the bottom line of what makes them exist, but if you ever just wanted a simple definition of a Zero-Day flaw, today is your day. That’s exactly what I’m going to give you right now!
These flaws can either be called Zero-Day or Day-Zero and they are basically any type of exploit that overtakes a security vulnerability within a computer system. They are usually announced to the public on the same day they are discovered or at least, generally known. The exploits come from well known hacker groups. Once they’re posted, software companies go to work to inform the rest of the public about them through online bulletins, etc. Unfortunately though, those same companies aren’t always able to offer up a fix for the flaws until a later time.
Some of the most recent Zero-Day flaws have been found in the Web browsers of Internet Explorer, Firefox and others. A few have also been discovered in the newer versions of IE (version 7) and Firefox (version 2). The exploits can also be found in Word documents and various other programs that you may have installed on your computer. Just always be on the look out for new exploits, because you never know when they might come along.