Interesting question.

"Nation" is really the people, not the country or the state, and the reason it's mixed up to the point of having reached the dictionaries, is the strong nation-states that have been founded in Europe the last few hundred years.

"State" is the organisation that governs a country or region, and in extension all it's concerns.

Activity means hacking.

So... a government organisation from a country of ethnically and culturally distinct people are hacking shit.

> we have taken action to provide additional critical security updates to address vulnerabilities that are at heightened risk of exploitation due to past nation-state activity and disclosures.

It's state sponsored hacking or hoarding of vulnerabilities.

It means governments are exploiting the OS instead of random hackers.

Presumably it's another case where an intelligence agency lost control of an exploit they developed, the same thing that happened with WannaCry.

The page links here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4025687/microsoft-s... ...which mentions some MSyy-nnn numbers, some of which have been mentioned on HN before.

>What the heck does "nation-state activity" means?

That looks hard enough to understand, but additionally it is "potential".

"Activity" = codename for hacking

Russia