The National Security Agency said it has alerted Microsoft to a critical vulnerability in its operating system to allow the company to fix the issue, in an apparent shift away from its traditional approach of weaponising flaws as hacking tools of its own.
Microsoft issued a patch — or update — to its systems on Tuesday in response, and said in a blog post that the flaw could have potentially exposed users of its Windows 10 system to third-party breaches or surveillance.
“Our goal is to rapidly alert that this is an important [patch],” Anne Neuberger, director of cyber security at the NSA, told reporters on Tuesday. “The percentage of enterprises that patch is still far lower than is needed.”