【Secret Confessions (2025) Spongkey Episode 44】

Shadow Brokers' big Windows gotcha moment for millions of Windows users around the world looks more like a "not so fast."

Hours after the hacking group,Secret Confessions (2025) Spongkey Episode 44 which apparently supports President Donald Trump and has been known to hack for money, dropped a terrifying package of NSA Windows Hacking tools that tapped into potentials vulnerabilities in most known versions of Windows (possibly even Windows 10), Microsoft finally stepped up with some more comforting news about the NSA hacking tools.

"We've investigated and confirmed that the exploits disclosed by the Shadow Brokers have already been addressed by previous updates to our supported products. Customers with up-to-date software are already protected." a Microsoft spokesperson told Mashableovernight.

This news doesn't entirely sync with what NSA leaker Edward Snowden tweeted yesterday, where he claimed that the exploits affected patchedWindows systems.

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Microsoft's blog post on the hack, however, lists nine of the dozen exploits and the exact patches that closed the holes:

“EternalBlue”: Addressed by MS17-010

“EmeraldThread”: Addressed by MS10-061

“EternalChampion”: Addressed by CVE-2017-0146 & CVE-2017-0147

“ErraticGopher”: Addressed prior to the release of Windows Vista

“EsikmoRoll”: Addressed by MS14-068

“EternalRomance”: Addressed by MS17-010

“EducatedScholar”: Addressed by MS09-050

“EternalSynergy”: Addressed by MS17-010

“EclipsedWing”: Addressed by MS08-067

There are three remaining exploits that, according to Microsoft, do not work on existing Windows systems. "[That] means that customers running Windows 7 and more recent versions of Windows or Exchange 2010 and newer versions of Exchange are not at risk," notes Phillip Misner, Microsoft Security Response Center Principal Security Group Manager in the post.

Misner added that Microsoft supports coordinated vulnerabilities disclosures and reminded those looking for Windows exploits that the company even offers a bug bounty, which means real money if you let Microsoft know about any Windows holes you find.

Note, though, that Microsoft does not mention Windows XP in the post. This 16-year-old operating system is still used by 7.4% of the world's desktops and could still be at risk.

It's all just another reminder to dump old systems running legacy Windows and to start accepting Microsoft's automated Windows updates...like now.

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