The violation was discovered in early January and is attributed to Chinese cyber spies focusing on American think tanks. At the end of February, five days before Microsoft Corp released a patch on March 2, there was an explosion of infiltrations by other intruders, which claimed the initial breach.
The White House described the hack earlier this month as an ‘active threat’ addressed by senior national security officials. The government’s response is being led by Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger, who has called on government officials and private sector experts to come up with solutions, especially as smaller businesses often do not have the resources to counter cyber attacks and to hack into too spacious.
Since the release of the instrument, the number of vulnerable systems has dropped to less than 10,000 from at least 120,000 at its peak.
Although Microsoft has received significant attention for providing software used by hackers, Charles Carmakal, senior vice president and chief technical officer of prominent FireEye cybersecurity firm, said that Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, deserves credit for working hard to help people who use the software to defend themselves.
He especially mentions the downloadable script script that people can use to apply patches and see if their systems are compromised.
“The effort they are making to help defend businesses is tremendous,” he said. “This is a difficult situation in which organizations are dealing with the vulnerability in general.”