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Darknet Diaries · July 15, 2025 · 58m

The Zero-Day Market: Selling Digital Weapons

Inside the market for zero-day vulnerabilities: how they are discovered, priced, and sold to governments, defense contractors, and occasionally criminals.

Canon

When governments pay millions for undisclosed vulnerabilities, the market environment incentivizes hoarding over disclosure. The economic environment determines whether vulnerabilities get fixed or weaponized.
Ethical vulnerability researchers can control the quality of their research and their disclosure decisions but cannot control how the market prices vulnerabilities or what governments do with them.