Cyber-arms industry

The cyber-arms industry are the markets and associated events surrounding the sale of software exploits, zero-days, cyberweaponry, surveillance technologies, and related tools for perpetrating cyberattacks. The term may extend to both grey and black markets online and offline.

For many years, the burgeoning dark web market remained niche, available only to those in-the-know or well-funded. Since at least 2005, governments including the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, and Israel have been buying exploits from defence contractors and individual hackers. This 'legitimate' market for zero-day exploits exists but is not well advertised or immediately accessible.

Attempts to openly sell zero-day exploits to governments and security vendors to keep them off the black market have so far been unsuccessful.