Comment by ted_dunning

Of course. They can simply wait to exploit their vulnerability. It it is well hidden, then it probably won't be noticed for a while and so you can wait until it is running on the majority of your target systems before exploiting it.

From their point of view it is a trade-off between volume of vulnerable targets, management impatience and even the time value of money. Time to market probably wins a lot of arguments that it shouldn't, but that is good news for real people.