Microsoft has stated that a Russian hacking group identified as Stronium also known as “Fancy Bears” has been found to be exploiting the security hole in Windows that was exposed by Google just a few days ago. The hacking group “Fancy Bears” has been linked to the Russian government and is most widely known for their hacking of the Democratic National Committee during the heated 2016 primary race.

The Russian hacking group is currently using a spear phishing attack to gain access to devices running Windows. Spear phishing is an attack that involves sending official (or authentic) looking emails to trick users into clicking on a file or visiting a site that exploits a software flaw to gain access to their computer. Microsoft has said that users running Windows Anniversary Edition and using Edge browser are protected from such attacks, but not everyone is using them both.

To combat this, we advise users to be mindful of all “from” email addresses that can be located at the very top of the email in most main stream applications just below the email title bar. Moreover, we suggest extreme caution with clicking into an email that you are not completely sure that it is coming from a reliable source, at least until the official patch is released by Microsoft on November 8, 2016.