“Patch Tuesday” apparently sparked hostile vulnerability scanning even before the patches were released:
Among the vulnerabilities addressed in patches released this week is a fix for an SSL flaw that left Windows 2000 and NT4 SSL sites open to remote compromise.
Mike Prettejohn, a director at Netcraft, said scanning activity for SSL vulnerabilities across the Net increased last Friday in advance of the release of Microsoft’s April patch batch. This hostile behaviour underlines the need to make patches available as quickly as possible, he added.
Source: The Register