This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

A broker is someone who acts as an intermediary between sellers and buyers. In the zero-day market, brokers such as Desautels and Sabien connect hackers with government agencies and corporations looking to buy zero-days. Brokers are paid a commission—usually a percentage of the total sale price—to facilitate a contract, and are valued for their professional networks and negotiating skills.

A computer program is a set of instructions that tells a computer what to do in order to solve a particular problem or execute a specific function. It is part of the software of a computer and consists of formulaic lines of unambiguous commands. 

The readable form of a program is called source code, which much be written in a programming language such as Javascript, Python, or Ruby. Programming languages have a prescribed syntax and semantics that allow humans to communicate with computers. Although there are thousands of these artificial languages in existence, only a few dozen are in common use. 

People who write and manipulate computer programs are called programmers or coders. Hackers manipulate computer programs by taking apart and changing the program’s code, substituting or adding their own instructions to the original text so that when the program is executed, the computer carries out their wishes.