wild

Definition

Shorthand for the uncontrolled real world outside the lab, almost always in the phrase "in the wild". Saying a malware sample, a bug, or a model failure was observed in the wild claims it occurred on real systems and real users, not in a constructed benchmark. It is an external-validity claim, and reviewers read it as one.

Explainers using this term

• Paper walkthrough: CyberFactory — turning wild CVEs into runnable training problemsCyberFactory: Scaling Cyber Security Capabilities with Instances from the Wild