Yesterday, a group known as Shadow Brokers released tools used by the NSA to hack into windows computers. The tools are currently available to any hacker out there.
The tools used several exploits that were available from Windows XP and above. Since the tools seem to have been made in 2013, it is unclear if they affect Windows 10 since it wasn’t launched then. The vulnerabilities are designed to affect any computer that is connected to a public network or the Internet.
Fortunately Microsoft first released a report saying that they have already patched all those exploits. It seems some of those patches were in security updates that were released back in March. This shows that Microsoft knew about the exploits way before they were publicized yesterday which is commendable of them.
The only catch is, users running Windows Vista and XP are unlikely to get the security updates. This is because those operating systems are no longer supported. Microsoft used this opportunity to remind people to upgrade to Windows 7 and above to shield themselves from such issues. Perhaps an updated Antivirus might protect them for now. In case you have Windows 7 or above, all you have to do is install security updates once you get prompted to, you will need to connect to the Internet first for the updates to be downloaded.
