In cybersecurity, a threat actor, bad actor or malicious actor is either a person or a group of people that take part in malicious acts in the cyber realm, including computers, devices, systems, or networks. Threat actors engage in cyber related offenses to exploit open vulnerabilities and disrupt operations. Threat actors have different educational backgrounds, skills, and resources. The frequency and classification of cyber attacks changes rapidly. The background of threat actors helps dictate who they target, how they attack, and what information they seek. There are a number of threat actors including: cyber criminals, nation-state actors, ideologues, thrill seekers/trolls, insiders, and competitors. These threat actors all have distinct motivations, techniques, targets, and uses of stolen data.
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Threat actor in the context of Threat (security)
In computer security, a threat is a potential negative action or event enabled by a vulnerability that results in an unwanted impact to a computer system or application.
A threat can be either a negative "intentional" event (i.e. hacking: an individual cracker or a criminal organization) or an "accidental" negative event (e.g. the possibility of a computer malfunctioning, or the possibility of a natural disaster event such as an earthquake, a fire, or a tornado) or otherwise a circumstance, capability, action, or event (incident is often used as a blanket term). A threat actor who is an individual or group that can perform the threat action, such as exploiting a vulnerability to actualise a negative impact. An exploit is a vulnerability that a threat actor used to cause an incident.
Threat actor in the context of Zero-day vulnerability
A zero-day (also known as a 0-day) is a vulnerability or security hole in a computer system unknown to its developers or anyone capable of mitigating it. Until the vulnerability is remedied, threat actors can exploit it in a zero-day exploit, or zero-day attack.
The term "zero-day" originally referred to the number of days since a new piece of software was released to the public, so "zero-day software" was obtained by hacking into a developer's computer before release. Eventually the term was applied to the vulnerabilities that allowed this hacking, and to the number of days that the vendor has had to fix them. Vendors who discover the vulnerability may create patches or advise workarounds to mitigate it, though users need to deploy that mitigation to eliminate the vulnerability in their systems. Zero-day attacks are severe threats.