'Many European countries won't buy zero day exploits, but there are a select number of countries that will buy them,' Dr Smeets added. 'And it would be an individual selling to a nation state or particularly a private sector company.' 'Back then we saw very few security researchers talking about how they would be willing to sell these exploits to the highest bidder,' he told Tech Monitor earlier this year. There have been 23 patched zero day exploits so far this year, according to Project Zero, although that doesn’t list those still in the wild like the type being sold by the unknown group.Ī market for zero days has existed for many years, but 'the field has changed significantly since the early 2000s', says Dr Max Smeets, a researcher at the ETH Zurich University centre for security studies.

Last year there were 58 zero day vulnerabilities discovered, according to Google’s Project Zero, which tracks new zero day issues with major software vendors. Data, insights and analysis delivered to you View all newsletters By The Tech Monitor team Sign up to our newsletters Sign up here

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