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Zero Day Logs

Zero Day Logs

By: ZDL
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Welcome to Zero Day Logs, the podcast that dissects the most consequential cybersecurity breaches of our time. We go beyond the headlines to reconstruct exactly how the world's most heavily defended networks are actually dismantled—focusing not just on the technical exploits, but the structural flaws, human errors, and critical executive decisions that determine who survives and who pays.


From billion-dollar hospitality empires brought to a standstill by a single, well-researched phone call to an IT help desk , to global identity gatekeepers compromised by contractor laptops and standard diagnostic files, each episode maps the attack path step-by-step. We break down the underlying enterprise architecture—explaining concepts like multi-factor authentication, federated identity, and zero-trust frameworks—so you understand the mechanics of the collapse.


Whether you are a security professional defending a network, or simply someone trying to understand how the digital infrastructure we all depend on actually fails, Zero Day Logs provides the unvarnished autopsy. We explore the uncomfortable reality of modern digital defense: that the weakest link is rarely a piece of software, but the human processes and vendor relationships where trust is extended and verification is skipped.


Find full technical breakdowns, attack timelines, and defensive configurations for every episode at zerodaylogs.com.

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Episodes
  • Home Depot: 56 Million Cards, One Vendor Password

    Home Depot: 56 Million Cards, One Vendor Password
    Jun 26 2026

    In 2014, attackers walked into Home Depot's network with a password stolen from a third-party vendor — and walked out with 56 million payment cards. The tool they used to move around inside was a genuine zero-day, the kind of flaw nation-states pay millions for. The harder part to explain is everything that was already wrong when they arrived: no multi-factor authentication, antivirus seven years out of date, the dedicated firewall switched off, and the card data moving in plain text. This episode walks through how the breach actually worked — and why the warnings that could have stopped it had already been sent, twice.

    (0:00) Intro
    (1:03) Home Depot and the payment rails
    (2:03) The way in: a vendor password
    (4:25) What a zero-day actually is
    (5:20) 7,500 registers and a watcher in memory
    (8:15) Five months of dwell time
    (9:55) How the banks found it first
    (11:23) Disclosure, response, and the bill
    (12:54) What was waiting: the warnings ignored
    (16:08) Defenses from the year of the iPhone
    (19:34) Chip-and-PIN, a CISO, and the unnamed
    (21:06) The distance between a warning and a check

    Free one-page technical breakdown PDF: zerodaylogs.com
    Sources are listed on the episode page at zerodaylogs.com.
    Show More Show Less
    22 mins
  • Pearson: The Patch That Sat Unapplied Six Months

    Pearson: The Patch That Sat Unapplied Six Months
    Jun 19 2026

    A critical security patch sat unapplied on a Pearson education platform for six months. By the time it was found, data on roughly 11.5 million student records across some 13,000 schools and universities had been taken — and Pearson described the breach to investors as a "hypothetical" risk. The SEC disagreed.

    This is the story of the distance between knowing and acting: a documented flaw, an available fix, and the gap in between.

    Chapters:
    (0:00) The Call From the FBI
    (1:14) Pearson and AIMSweb
    (2:38) What Remote Code Execution Means
    (3:40) The Patch That Was Never Applied
    (5:14) Inside the Breach
    (8:52) Four Months, Undetected
    (10:30) What "Material" Means to the SEC
    (12:01) The Notification Letters
    (13:07) "A Hypothetical Risk"
    (14:55) The Decade-Long Campaign
    (16:54) The SEC Charge
    (18:42) Knowing vs. Acting
    (19:22) Takeaways

    Free one-page technical breakdown: https://zerodaylogs.com
    Watch the full video version on YouTube: [video URL]

    Sources: SEC enforcement order (2021); DOJ indictment (2020); UK ICO penalty notice; Pearson Form 6-K (2019); state AG notifications.
    Show More Show Less
    20 mins
  • How Uber Hid a Breach of 57 Million People

    How Uber Hid a Breach of 57 Million People
    Jun 12 2026

    On November 14, 2016, two hackers told Uber they had the personal records of
    57 million users and drivers. What Uber did next wasn't a breach response — it
    was a cover-up: a $100,000 payment disguised as a bug-bounty reward, false NDAs,
    and a year of silence while a binding FTC order required disclosure. The breach
    itself was fixable. The concealment became the first criminal conviction of a
    chief security officer.

    (0:00) The hackers make contact
    (0:40) The break-in: reused passwords to 57M records
    (6:45) Disguising the ransom as a bug bounty
    (10:40) The FTC order that made silence a crime
    (13:27) The first criminal conviction of a CSO
    (17:05) The four controls that were missing

    Free one-page technical breakdown (timeline, attack path, the four missing
    controls): https://zerodaylogs.com

    Sources: U.S. FTC enforcement action and expanded consent decree; New York
    Attorney General settlement; U.S. DOJ charging documents and trial record,
    United States v. Sullivan; U.S. SEC filings.

    Zero Day Logs — the real anatomy of security breaches. Measured, sourced,
    no hype. https://zerodaylogs.com
    Show More Show Less
    20 mins
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