It turned out that Ukraine’s own backwardness—and an archaic remnant of its past—had played into the hands of the attackers. In true post-Soviet style, Ukraine required businesses to use a common piece of accounting software, M.E.Doc. It was clunky, it was old, but it was required by the state. Corrupting the software with malware was ridiculously easy: No one had invested in updating it in years. In fact, it used an outdated “platform” that had not even been supported by its manufacturer since 2013. No updates, no security patches.
