John and his colleagues were baffled. They checked the .NET Framework updates and ensured that their applications were up-to-date, but the issue persisted.

One evening, as John was about to leave the office, he received an email from an unknown sender. The message read:

As he dug deeper, John discovered that gcinst.exe was located in the .NET Framework installation directory. It seemed to be a legitimate Microsoft tool, but its purpose remained unclear.