What's up with the jargon "zero day"?
Why not just say "previously unknown"?
I'm often pro-jargon. I.e. I think a lot of jargon exist for good reasons, so I'm open to this one also being good in some way. E.g jargon can be useful for naming precise technical concepts.
Anyone want to defend "zero day" jargon?
No steel-maning please!
I.e. only want answers from people who genuinely think that this is a good jargon.
Update:My question has been answered in the comments.
It was previously called a "zero-day exploit". It referred to the time after a vulnerability was published for a corresponding exploit to appear. A zero-day exploit is one that appears together with the security vulnerability, leaving the software maintainer zero days to fix the vulnerability before anyone can exploit it.
Later people started to call security vulnerabilities for which a zero-day exploit exists "zero-day vulnerability" or just "zero day".
More people seem to use it to mean that the software maintainer has had no time to react to the vulnerability. It's a zero-day when I find it, a one-day when I report it, and very possibly a 180-day when you release your actual patch for it. But quite a few people also seem to use it the way you suggest. It's always about how long some "reference defender" has known about it, but people's idea of who the "reference defender" is seems to vary.
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TIL what a "zero day" is! Was always confused because of the Y2K problem - I thought zero days have something to do with calendars. (That didn't make sense but I somehow didn't consciously thought about the confusion.)