Microsoft patches 7 year-old server security flaw

Microsoft has patched a security flaw in its Server Message Block service seven years after it was first disclosed by security researchers.

Server Message Block (SMB) is used by Windows to share files and print documents over a network.

In a blog posting, Microsoft acknowledged that Metasploit tools were already available on the internet to exploit the SMB flaw.

Metasploit is an open-source toolkit which hackers and penetration testers use to build attack code. According to Metasploit, the flaw Microsoft patched goes back to March 2001, when a hacker published code showing how the attack was done.