The attacker may have known about the exploit for a long time and were saving it, but upon finding out that it was about to be disclosed, they decided it was now or never.

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cubefox 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

How could he have known on Oct 17 that it was about to be disclosed? The dates only leaked on Oct 20.

	▲	stickfigure 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You're asking: How could a hacker - with an exploit that potentially allows him/her to break into half the computers on the internet - know some secret information that is stored on a computer on the internet? It could also just have been a run-of-the-mill exploit in WordPress.