zero-day (adjective)

Rick Howard: The word is zero-day.

Rick Howard: Spelled: Z as in zombie, E as in Emax, R as in R F, C, O is in overflow and day like a sunny day.

Rick Howard: Definition: a class of software security weakness issues where independent researchers discover a software flaw before the owners of the code discover it for themselves.

Rick Howard: Example sentence: Investigators have observed some ransomware that uses zero-day exploits before; but it is rare.

Rick Howard: Context: zero-day refers to the moment the race starts, on day zero, between network defenders who are trying to fix the flaw, before hackers leverage it to cause damage. It is a race because on day zero, there is no known fix to the issue. Practitioners use the word to describe vulnerabilities, exploits and other security mechanisms. Zero-day exploit code is more urgent than zero-day vulnerabilities because not only is there a new software flaw, but also that hackers have already written code that leverages that flaw.

Rick Howard: In Season 2, Episode 5 of Mr. Robot, created by Sam Esmail and starring Rami Malik, Christian Slater and Carly Chaikin, Elliott uses the Ruby programming language to modify an existing zero-day metasploit exploit to target the standard Android phones issued to all FBI agents.