Microsoft Hack Victims Must Be on Alert for Sleeper Cells

Vietnamese cybersecurity researcher Dinh Ho Anh Khoa uncovered a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s document management software, SharePoint, at an event designed to encourage ethical hacking that makes our technology more robust.

- Bloomberg

IN MAY, VIETNAMESE cybersecurity researcher Dinh Ho Anh Khoa uncovered a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s document management software, SharePoint, at an event designed to encourage ethical hacking that makes our technology more robust. He received $100,000 from Trend Micro, the security group that sponsored the event.

As part of the deal, flaws discovered in these competitions must be kept under wraps to give affected companies time to assess the threat, work on a fix, test it, and then release it. In this case, Microsoft released its patch by July 8—a reasonable timeframe, cybersecurity experts say, given there had been no indication the hack had been used "in the wild" until July 7.