AI shrinks zero-day exploit time from a year to a single day, heading toward one minute — Zero-Day Clock warns security window has collapsed

A cybersecurity tracker says the time from vulnerability discovery to real-world exploitation has collapsed from nearly a year in 2021 to just over one day.

The report warns that the trend could soon shrink to about one hour, and eventually as little as one minute, making patching too slow to matter.

It says zero-day attacks are rising sharply and AI is accelerating both discovery and exploitation.

The report calls for stronger default security, zero-trust design, memory-safe coding, disposable systems, open AI defense tools, and greater vendor liability.