San Francisco — It was late February, and Microsoft engineers had been working for weeks on a handful of alarming weaknesses in the company’s popular Exchange e-mail service. They were rushing to send out a fix, targeting the second Tuesday of March — part of a monthly ritual known in cybersecurity circles as “patch Tuesday”.

The hackers got a head start. After weeks of discreet attacks, Chinese hackers shifted into high gear. The result was a sprawling campaign that engulfed thousands of organisations in a matter of days...

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