I agree with Nihil and Catch, with one thing I wanted to make clearer though...

I think that the confusion is a semantic one because "a potential exploit" is the same as a vulnerability or weakness.
I believe this also, and part of where some of the confusion comes from is:

While its true that a 'potential exploit' is a vulnerability or weakness,
a vulnerability or weakness isn't always a 'potential exploit'.

Catch's example works well to explain what I mean by this:

Being that setting up a Linux box to run everything as root is a definate weakness to the system, but someone useing that weakness is not exploiting the system only taking advantage of it. Exploiting the system would be if it were setup right, with users not having root access, and to still gain root privilages...

Or at least that what it means to me...

RRP