A vulnerability in the SMB network file sharing protocol can be exploited to crash Windows computers. The vulnerability was disclosed Thursday when a security researcher posted a proof-of-concept exploit for it on GitHub. Microsoft will likely wait until February 14 to fix the flaw. The company typically releases security updates on Patch Tuesday, which occurs on the second Tuesday of every month. There was concern initially that the flaw might allow for arbitrary code execution, which would have made it critical, but that has since been downgraded to 7.8.”]

