computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...

, the Zeroday Emergency Response Team (ZERT) was a group of volunteer security researchers who produced emergency patches for

zero day attack A zero-day (also known as a 0-day) is a computer-software Vulnerability (computing), vulnerability previously unknown to those who should be interested in its mitigation, like the vendor of the target software. Until the vulnerability is mitigate ...

vulnerabilities in

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...

. They came to public notice in late September 2006 with a patch for that month's

Vector Markup Language Vector Markup Language (VML) is an obsolete XML-based file format for two-dimensional vector graphics. It was specified in Part 4 of the Office Open XML standards ISO/IEC 29500 and ECMA-376. According to the specification, VML is a deprecated ...

vulnerability before

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

, later producing a patch for older versions of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

which are no longer supported by Microsoft. The team included several members prominent in antivirus and network security work. Their manifesto states: ''"ZERT members work together as a team to release a non-vendor patch when a so-called "0day" (zero-day) exploit appears in the open which poses a serious risk to the public, to the infrastructure of the Internet or both. The purpose of ZERT is not to "crack" products, but rather to "uncrack" them by averting security vulnerabilities in them before they can be widely exploited."'' The ZERT website has not been updated since April 2007 and the group is presumed to be inactive.

References

Zero-Day Response Team Launches with Emergency IE Patch
( Ryan Naraine, eWeek, 22 September 2006)
ZERT Patches Out-of-Support Windows OS
(Ryan Naraine, eWeek, 29 September 2006)

External links

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