Mandiant, meanwhile, sells an incident response platform that sits on end-user devices and helps businesses determine when sensitive information has been breached and, the company says, automatically closes vulnerabilities.
Technology jumps inexorably forward, opening and closing vulnerabilities.
The assorted Reuters blog postings on Friday published through a now closed vulnerability in the WordPress software used to manage the site, bore a superficially convincing resemblance to other genuine entries.
As discussed in the last chapter, however, while it's important to patch system and application software to close critical vulnerabilities, many (or most) malicious programs are not self-launching and don't rely on system vulnerabilities such as buffer and stack overflows.
When the NSA discloses the vulnerability, the creators of the software can modify the software through a "patch," which can then be downloaded by users to close the vulnerability.
"We took immediate steps to close this vulnerability," he added.
When the vulnerability is disclosed publicly, a series of actions can be undertaken: disabling the weak system, updating anti-virus software signatures and publishing patches to close the vulnerability.
The Bank of England official behind the stress tests, Andrew Bailey, told the BBC that while RBS and Lloyds did not actually fail, they were found to be "too close [to vulnerability] for comfort".
As the report noted, if the reactors were closed, the vulnerability of the fuel to attack would not initially change.
Lifelock closed the vulnerability, which is called a cross-site scripting attack, after Taylor notified the company.
