Yet, while a catastrophic worm is the obvious threat, other, more subtle dangers exist as well, says Dan Dahlberg, director of security research at Bitsight.
"You think of the activities of the sorts of people trying to take advantage of this vulnerability for nefarious purposes — there are people who are less experienced, who would likely turn it into a worm," he says. "But there are other actors who might utilize this vulnerability in a much more stealthy manner, and that is going to be much harder to detect."
In early July, Bitsight found that some 800,000 computers still exhibited external signs of vulnerability to BlueKeep. About 5,000 systems are patched daily, Dahlberg says.