A group known as the Shadow Brokers published Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability on Good Friday a set of confidential hacking tools used by the NSA to exploit Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability software vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows software . According to Fortune , Microsoft announced Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability on the same day that it had patched Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability the vulnerabilities related to the NSA leak Attack.Databreach . It was especially important that the company moved quickly since juvenile hackers — also known as script kiddies — were expected to be active over the holiday weekend while defenders were away . The threat was the latest and , according to security experts , the most damaging set of stolen documents published Attack.Databreach by the Shadow Brokers , which is believed to be tied to the Russian government . Experts say Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability the leak , which was mostly lines of computer code , was made up of a variety of “ zero-day exploits ” that can infiltrate Windows machines and then be used for espionage , vandalism or document theft . The group also published Attack.Databreach another set of documents that show that the NSA penetrated the SWIFT banking network in the Middle East . “ There appears to be at least several dozen exploits , including zero-day vulnerabilities , in this release . Some of the exploits even offer a potential ‘ God mode ’ on select Windows systems . A few of the products targeted include Lotus Notes , Lotus Domino , IIS , SMB , Windows XP , Windows 8 , Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2012 , ” said Cris Thomas , a strategist at Tenable Network Security . The Shadow Brokers have been threatening the U.S. government for some time but until last Friday had not released anything critical . There is speculation that this document dump Attack.Databreach could be retaliation by Russia ( if the hackers are indeed tied to the country ) in response to recent U.S. military actions .